Newly Forming AthenaHealth User Group - Strength in Numbers

👤 Who: Athenahealth users

 💡 Why: Because Athenahealth is a powerful tool, and we all have a lot to learn from one another

📍 Where: Zoom and in person (in the Portland, OR area)

🗓️  When: Inaugural session on March 8 (sessions to follow in June and September, and quarterly on an ongoing basis)

🌟 How to join: If you'd like to attend this or future sessions, RSVP to misty@healtheps.com

Improving Your Financial Strength

How about a big raise? Check out the Medical Money Matters podcast episode (lucky #) 13 on Coding: Bane of Your Existence or Key to Your Success?

First of all, for physicians, improving coding is a must. I can hear your deep sigh… so many coding seminars… so many rules to remember… so much BS! Yes, it is. And, it’s how you get paid.

Check out this episode of Medical Money Matters, where we talk about ways to get paid for everything you've done for your patients. In addition, we review how to partner with your coders, conduct coding reviews, and create feedback loops that make the whole system hum. Get over the fear of coding audits and give yourself a raise.

Listen to Medical Money Matters on all major podcast platforms, or check it out here.

Systems Focus for Strength

Healthcare is full of diagnosticians and clinicians who have been trained to look for the “right” answer for the patient. This is what we do. We have all been brought up in a strong right/wrong paradigm, and we bring this to our management of staff as well.

If we get an outcome we don’t want, it’s easy to look for who “did it wrong.” Why didn’t the front desk register the patient correctly? Now the claim has been denied, and the billing office is looking for someone to blame. 

Why didn’t the patient get a call back before the weekend? Now the on-call physician is getting to talk to a very sick patient on Saturday, and they’re looking for someone to blame in the Medical Assistant ranks.

We can observe multiple situations like these, and our recommendation is to look at this as a system and ask: “What broke down inside of the system?” If we have a system to register patients and a system to relay messages and prioritize return calls, where did the system break down?

Reframing problems into “system breakdowns” allows you to focus NOT on an individual to blame, but on the whole system, which needs an upgrade. Perhaps the front office training documents need to be updated or a newer employee needs a bit more 1:1 training to get the importance of registration accuracy. Have we given them any feedback? Maybe the patient triage needs a review and an update so sick patients are handled quickly and efficiently.

Talking about it this way with the whole team, and involving everyone in problem-solving gets us out of the need to make someone wrong, and instead, has everyone focus on how to make things better.

Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath

When thinking about our personal and professional development, we frequently focus on areas of opportunity or improvement. How about a focus on our strengths? What if we delegated those things that we don’t excel at and instead spent most of our time doing things we are already naturally skilled at? 

Strengths Finder 2.0 allows you to do just that. It is built on research from Gallup into the 34 Human Strengths. Each copy includes a unique access code for their website so you can complete their assessment. The result: your Top 5 Strengths outlined for you, so you can focus on what you do best.

💡 Tip: share with your entire team and use their online tool to display your team and everyone’s strengths. Then you can lean on each other, understand each other, and set your team up for success.

New Podcast for Physicians!

We're delighted with the growth of Jill's podcast, Medical Money Matters. Listen on all major podcast platforms, or here.

She’s had solocasts on finance for physicians (and their managers), budgets, demystifying financial statements, and internal controls. Jill has had fun interviewing national experts on revenue cycle (Episode 3) and on embezzlers (Episode 7). Subscribe to get access to new episodes as soon as they’re dropped. Much more to come!

Medical Administrators Performance Series

Join us for a new experience of learning, building community, and driving performance that's specifically geared toward medical practice leaders

Open to anyone who is running a clinic or clinic department. Please email info@healtheps.com if you have any questions prior to enrolling. 

Physician Leadership Program

Forming Cohort 4 now

The PLP is filling another cohort for a start sometime in Q1 - see www.physicianlp.org and nominate any of your up-and-coming physician leaders for this invaluable one-year course.