Six Sigma Blogs

What would you do if you found yourself with extra time a day? Would you get a jump on the next day’s projects? Would you use it to work on that never-ending honey-do list? Would you use that extra hour to ensure you would have an extra hour every day to make yourself invaluable to your employer, your spouse, or your community?

Whether you are a stay-at-home mom or a CEO, chances are if you are “at least at certain times during the year” required to do extensive reading for your job. Quarterly reports or the latest parenting blogs and books can range from two pages to two hundred, and that can take some time to read especially when you are supposed to be keeping up on what the competitors are doing, or you only have naptime to yourself and want to take full advantage.

With the Complete Speed Reading Program Family Edition, you will be reading at twice the speed in just the first hour, guaranteed!

But you won’t just learn how to read faster with the Complete Speed Reading Program. We at Speed Read America take a holistic approach to life and our product, we know that you are more than a reader. Included with our guaranteed reading program are also programs designed to help you set goals and achieve them. We also include relaxation and a course on developing your own self power.

Created by Dr. Jay Polmar, a former university instructor and author with over 40 titles to his name, the Speed Read Complete Family Edition has been used by people of all ages from third grade to grandma and grandpa. Speed Read Complete has been translated into five languages and the program has been used in over 25 countries around the world to help people learn to speed read in their native language.

Whether you are in a reading-intense comprehension-required field, such as law, medicine, journalism, or academics, or you’re a student looking to get ahead, or you just want to be able to say “Yes, I did read that book, and this are my thoughts of it” The Complete Speed Reading Program is for you.

What would you do with that extra time a day that you never had before? Get more sleep? Spend time with your family? Go out with friends? Finally do all those things you’d always said you wanted to do but never had time “like volunteering at a local charity? What would you do if you could read faster” finally join a book club? Take a continuing education class? Read the encyclopedia?

How about “Anything you would like to do”?

Almost half of hospitals senior executives responding to a recent Transunion survey reported a marked (between 6 and 10 percent) growth in bad debt over the past 18 months. Over 25% realized between 11 and 20 percent growth in this key metric.

Additional important information in the survey included:

- Nearly 79 percent of respondents said they are concerned that Consumer Directed Healthcare Plans will increase their bad debt within the next two years.

- When ranking business objectives in order of importance, 43 percent of respondents said increasing collections at the time of service and post discharges were their number one objective, followed by improving operational efficiencies at 21 percent and decreasing bad debt at 18 percent.

These data points show a compelling need to revisit medical practice patient collections and insure it is being done effectively and efficiently. Tools and approaches that can serve a practice well include:

- Better use of on-line electronic payment tools. The latest tools can make it easy for you to accept practically any form of payment on-line and for patients to pay in a self-serve manner.

- Do not allow you credit card readers to be a bottleneck. The latest ones are inexpensive (since they are software based and hook up to a front desk PC). You should have at least two both for backup purposes and to facilitate taking payments from multiple patients at once. In addition, try and use one that converts checks to electronic payments for almost instantaneous processing of checks.

- Develop and rigorously follow a policy concerning patients that cannot pay co-pays (and other prearranged payments) on the day of service. Will you tell them they need to reschedule? Will you call and collect payments before they arrive? If you see patients that cannot pay on the day of service then make it easy for them to pay you after the fact. Do not wait for the claim to adjudicate to ask for them to send the co-pay. Give them a patient statement showing the co-pay balance due before they leave the office. Include a pre-addressed payment envelope.

- Tailor your follow-up based on the credit status of each patient. Your three basic categories could be: (1) insured, employed patients with a record of timely payments; (2) insured, employed patients with a spotty history; and (3) uninsured or underinsured patients. You might want to dispense with follow-up calls altogether for the underinsured or uninsured, but as part of your collection policy, you might help them sign up for Medicaid or charity resources from the get-go.

- Track how well your front desk staff collects co pays and coinsurance. Reward and discipline accordingly.

These steps can help you avoid falling prey to rising bad debt.

Copyright 2008. Carl Mays II

It has been accurately stated that you cannot manage what you do not measure. This is particularly true in the arena of medical billing denials. Without a strong Revenue Cycle Denial Management system in place you cannot properly manage this critical element of medical billing. If you are not managing your denials then you are most likely leaving more than 20% of your revenues uncollected.

There is a lot of confusion about the definition of denial management. If you ask five medical billing experts what this means you will probably receive six answers.

A good start to finding out if your practice is suffering from improper denial management is to find out from your medical billing service (or in-house medical billing manager) how they manage denials and how they measure success in this area.

A good denial management system is not simply about working denials, it is about systematically gathering the data required to eliminate denials. Working denials is like pumping water from your basement when a pipe bursts. Denial management is about fixing the pipe so you no longer need to pump water from the basement.

The system accomplishes this needed service by tracking, quantifying, and reporting on every claim billed for which any payer denied the service. The reporting should be comprehensive, tracking all denials (not just selected denials). If used properly, the system can reduce first-time claim denials by over 50 percent. Many practices have no way of monitoring if payers are denying their claims at excessive or unwarranted rates, or even for what reason. These practices are probably losing 10 to 20 percent of their total revenue.

What is typically missing from troubled billing operations is the lack of the management-reporting expertise needed to extract the data in a concise and meaningful way coupled with a lack of methodical, measured billing process needed to correct mistakes. A comprehensive Revenue Cycle Denial Management system has two main purposes. The first purpose is to provide feedback on why claims are denying and how many claims are not being paid on the first submission to the respective payers. The second is to fix these issues. Effective Revenue Cycle Denial Management software databases must be designed to track, quantify, and report on all denials for all payers.

The standard denial management output should track by payer, the number of claims denied and the reason for the denials. This must be coupled with a dashboard reporting tool for quick visual management. With these reports the billing team can easily identify which payers are inappropriately denying claims; they can also compare these payers to their peers for proper trending and follow-up. This output allows the medical billing team to develop and refine payer specific rules to prevent future payer denials by insuring all claims are clean when they are submitted.

With the analytical capabilities available, the medical billing department or medical billing company can identify systemic medical billing problems, create and test solutions to the problems and implement process changes that will increase collections AND drive down medical billing costs. One example of this is pursuit of Clean Claim Law violators with the denial data produced from the denial management system.

As previously mentioned, an effective denial management system is critical for your practice if you want to improve your medical billing and hasten your collections. Implementation of the proper system can easily increase collections by more than 10% and could even exceed a 20% increase in collections.

Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II

No matter what technology you deploy or the strength of your process, superior medical billing ultimately relies upon a strong billing staff. There are four key elements to creating a world-class billing team:

1) Deploy a systematic approach to and dedicated resources for obtaining and developing strong employees:

The leading billing organizations recruit the best staff. A dedicated, specialized HR team evaluates applicants-applicants must pass a proprietary billing testing process assessing both skill and will. This process shouldn’t be different from the recruiting process of a Fortune 500 organization.

The leading billing organizations train to develop desired quality. Junior staff members must pass demanding training programs-junior team members are developed into billers, capable of following the measured and monitored billing process. In addition, staff is trained throughout the year in latest payer rules, follow-up techniques and compliance guidelines. A dedicated Compliance Officer is responsible for all additional HIPAA and OIG training.

If you do not remove weak performers from your team they will demoralize the entire group and will bring most people down to their level of performance. It is. Unfortunately true, that on bad apple can spoil the bunch. Each year remove the weakest members of the team based upon clear performance metrics.

2) Focus your team members: The best medical billing processes are designed to allow individuals to specialize in specific areas such as charge posting, insurance follow-up or payment posting. Such specialization allows the individuals to become true experts capable of spotting issues quickly that billers spending their time performing multiple tasks might miss.

3) Invest heavily in analytical efforts: Continuous improvement of the billing process and the billing team requires significant and on-going analytical efforts. By measuring key factors about both payers and the billing process, a billing group can speed up collections, lower denials and lower the cost of the billing process.

4) Compensate your medical billing specialists based upon performance, not effort: Your billing department should succeed when the practice succeeds. Many good billing systems have been undermined by a compensation approach that does not give the medical billing team the proper motivation to doggedly and efficiently pursue the practice’s claims. Remember to insure the compensation system falls with the OIG’s guidelines.

Utilizing these concepts will allow you to assemble and grow a medical billing team that will be capable of utilizing a great medical billing process to deliver powerful results.

Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II

Bad debt is on the rise according to a 2008 survey from Transunion. This survey reported that almost 80% of the hospitals responding indicated bad debt growth of between 6 and 20 percent since in the past 20 months.

Additional important information in the survey included:

- Consumer Directed Healthcare Plans are a source of concern for hospital administrators. Almost 80% believe they will be a significant source of additional bad debt by the end of 2010.

- When ranking business objectives in order of importance, 43 percent of respondents said increasing collections at the time of service and post discharges were their number one objective, followed by improving operational efficiencies at 21 percent and decreasing bad debt at 18 percent.

These data points show a compelling need to revisit medical practice patient collections and insure it is being done effectively and efficiently. Tools and approaches that can serve a practice well include:

- Expand your use of the latest generation of on-line bill presentment and payment acceptance services/applications. These latest tools prevent you from ever being unable to accept a form of payment and they can lower your cost of pursuing patient balances.

- Do not allow you credit card readers to be a bottleneck. The latest ones are inexpensive (since they are software based and hook up to a front desk PC). You should have at least two both for backup purposes and to facilitate taking payments from multiple patients at once. In addition, try and use one that converts checks to electronic payments for almost instantaneous processing of checks.

- Put in place a clear policy about paying co-pays (and any other amounts due) on the day of service. Once in place; stick to the policy. If the policy allows patients to be seen without paying amounts due on the service date then make sure they leave the office with the information they need to pay you quickly - a patient statement and an envelope with the payment address.

- Prioritize patient collection efforts by more than just the balance owed. Consider the patients likelihood to pay. A $1,000 balance from a patient that is only 20% likely to pay is worth much less than a $500 balance from a patient that is 80% likely to pay. Elements to consider when accessing likeliness to pay include prior payment history and employment status.

- Use a monthly bonus system for employees that collect patient payments in the office. Make the amount meaningful and the metrics clear and easy to track.

Follow these steps and you can side step the bad debt train wreck.

Copyright 2008. Carl Mays II

One of the most important things in billing is to create and follow a very structured plan that can be measured each step of the way. Remember, if it cannot be measured and monitored it cannot be improved! One key element of this plan must be how to consistently and reliable create clean claims.

A process that insures claims go out the door clean can lower a practice’s AR to well under 45 days.

The leading medical billing services utilize scrubbers that ensure your claims are clean before they are submitted to payers. These scrubs accelerate the speed of collections by avoiding denials and delays. They also increase collections by minimizing the volume of “re-work” and allowing billing staff to focus their efforts on pursuing true collections improvement opportunities and not simply resubmitting claims that should have been paid the first time. As a result of these scrubbers, over 90% of claims submitted are paid upon first submission. These “scrubbers” include:

- A baseline scrubber. This scrubber insures that the claim has at least the basic information such as a social security number, properly formatted insurance id number, etc.

- Scrubber that checks coding, bundling, and procedure information versus local Medicare and CCI rules. This scrub assures better coding, identifies overlooked procedures or codes.

These scrubbers will lead to a marked improvement versus a billing process with no scrubbing; they are, however, not a complete scrubbing solution. A full solution requires a scrubber that can have a customized rule set that takes the knowledge of the billing company or medical practices and codifies it so that it can be applied to every claim before submission. This scrubber is:

- Customizable Rule Scrubber that applies the learnings from each denied claim to all future claims. This allows the rules to stay in step with the payers ever changing adjudication rules. Such scrubbers are the hallmark of the best medical billing services.

Consistent use of the scrubbers outlined above can decrease a medical practice’s collections cycle by up to 50 days. This is why you need to insure this critical step is being completed no matter who is doing your Medical Billing.

Copyright 2008 Carl Mays II

Help Your Plumbing Business Grow

Beginning a plumbing business is just like beginning any small business. Nonetheless, there are definite state, local and expert directives, documentations and authorizations that are requisite in the plumbing business.

A plumbing venture can be managed solely by adopting effective strategies. Furthermore, one can also employ several plumbers and maintain staff and become successful in this specific business with the strategies. The plumbing venture can be run by self-determining or by a group of franchise or an association of plumbers who have a vital role in marketing and selling.

It is true that plumbing business is a profitable venture which brings in profit and cash flow. However, there are some rewarding tips that can be followed while launching a successful plumbing business.

Promote Prudently- Try to understand where your clientele, which means your target audience. Learn about where they are coming from and what they want.

Cooperate With Your Clientele- There is no harm in greeting and asking your clients, how they come to know about your services and are they enjoying your services. This manner, you would apprehend your unique selling proposition

Include Information in the Ads- Unnecessary information might create confusion among the customers and also is not what everyone looks for. Center only on your fine quality points. Keep it concise and all-inclusive.

Be Exclusive- Make a distinguished feature of your trade from your opponent. When a person is seeking for plumber service, they are less concerned in knowing who your agent is.

Business Cards Lead To Promotion - Use your business cards liberally .The more business cards you have hovering around your society, the additional work they draw.

Make A List Of Your Clientele. Make a potential list of your client’s e-mail IDs and phone numbers. Think about sending a newsletter at certain interval as it works great for keeping them updated with the services you provide.

Make Timely Payments. Make the payments to your clients or corporate friends timely. The best possible way is to highlight them as payable within 7 days.

Maintain A Pithy And Good Documentation. Assemble the record receipts cautiously and add the price of every payment made against each material or item used on a work. If you miss out a few details then do not bother much, it would be of no impairment to your venture. These minuscule details, is what avoids mess and future bankruptcy.

Pep Up Your Team Activities. Make certain that you provide reliable and good prospects for employees by building an effective team. If you include encouraging activities in work place, then employees get motivated to act upon better.

Take Assistance Of Hi-End Techniques. The technology can be very helpful in growing your business enterprise. There is a novel launch in the world of technology each day. You must be equipped with such technology, so as to promote and expand your business.

An underappreciated source of today’s high medical care costs is the medical claim adjudication process that is employed by commercial payers. The current process is intentionally fraught with unnecessary hurdles and pitfalls that save the payers money by lowering the amount they reimburse physicians and facilities. Well designed medical billing processes from medical billing companies and medical offices can eliminate the profitability of the current adjudication process and streamline the entire insurance reimbursement process.

Although the issue of claims processing is mentioned as one of the sources of rising healthcare costs, the true economic drivers that are keeping the current inefficient and opaque processes in place has not been well explored. The fact of the matter is that the current process prey’s upon the technology, process and staffing limitations of most physician offices to take money from the physicians and give it to the payers. The result is rising costs and following revenues for the average medical provider.

Payers consistently and systematically underpay claims. In addition, claims that have been properly submitted and for which proof exists the claim was accepted are simply “lost” by payers and the claims have to be resubmitted (sometimes multiple times) in order to secure payment. I know from experience with many practices that this “lost” claim phenomena is rampant across payers and states.

Payers have strong incentives to utilize these tactics to lower their costs. More than 50% of the claims that are underpaid or lost by payers are never pursued by physicians and facilities. Since the payers can save significant money by losing claims and accidently underpaying they have strong motivation to make the billing process difficult.

Nothing is free, so payers do incur a price on their end because of the current process. It cost about $25 when a payer that has spotted an underpaid or missing claim gets a insurance representative on the phone. This has lead payers to get quite clever and grade each medical provider. The grade is based upon how well the provider spots issues and calls the payer (thus generating costs for the payers). If the provider catches the payers “mistake” each time they will be rated an A. If they never catch the payer’s errors they will receive a F. Interestingly, the payers that are rated an F seem to have many more lost and underpaid claims than those rated an A.

As soon as payers see the economic motivation of losing and underpaying claims disappear, they will be forced to adopt acclaim adjudication process that is easier and cost significantly less for medical providers. The way to make this happen is to ensure that each provider is rated an A. This is why improved medical billing processes are a key weapon in the fight against rising healthcare costs.

If the medical practices and medical billing services dig in and fight for the last dollar on every claim they will quickly force the insurance payers to adjust their internal processes. With each claim paying in full and their staff inundated with billing specialist asking why a claim was lost or underpaid, the payers will see rapidly shrinking profits that will force them to acknowledge that the costs of the games they play are no longer justified by the savings form unpaid claims.

There is lots of talk about the dream system where claim adjudication happens in real time and physicians immediately receive their reimbursements. Such a system will never happen until the economic incentive payers have to maintain a difficult, complicated and veiled system are removed. This is what well designed and executed medical billing processes can do by doggedly pursuing each claim.

Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II

Expand Your Plumbing Business Prospects

The idea of launching and managing your own plumbing business might be exciting, but it can also be challenging. Even for someone with techniques of plumbing business knowledge can still be complicated. There is an enormous dissimilarity between being the owner of your own business and being in partnership. As an owner you are solely responsible for every planning and promotion of the business.

Additionally, your dream and efforts will be to achieve success in your business. Harmonizing to the verity, you have to administer the business solely at your own risk and have to tackle all the challenges that will arise in nurturing the business. On the other hand, launching a venture is not always a full of adversities, if you put into practice all the fundamental principles and arrange your things accordingly. There are various incidents that are epitome of prospects and also complementary to collapse if you make your business planning properly. The few things that need to take account are- coaching, team building, customer service, management marking leadership etc. to generate profitable cash flow.

The plumbing business is not distinctive from other trades; as a result, the similar regulations are applicable for instance, you require a great business plan, so as to procure funding for your business. Writing a business plan is like sketching plot to reach your destination. You’re not expected to reach your target unless you are aware where you are heading, and what you will require to get there. You are needed to comprehend your target audience and strive to resolve their troubles. Explore the market and do research. Market research is fundamental for the success of any kind of business. It is imperative to check that there is a requirement for the service you are willing to provide.

Running business is like a hard nut to crack, success comes to those who stretch out and make clear to masses about their services. Despite the consequences that you are launching your business or expanding your business the main factor is to promote your services in an attractive way. This can be done by following the simple marketing strategies: placing some advertisements in your local newspapers, give out brochures and hang out attractive flyers in stores, public places and institutions. If you are planning to launch your business for the first time then you can begin promoting your services in your vicinity. If you provide impressive services and create a standard then they will refer you to small groups. However, you should search the enterprises that deal with your vicinity for business. Also collect details about your competitors that give a clear idea of the contemporary strategies.

If you are seeking for investment, then mark and classify groups that have deep curiosity in your forte market. This will be one of the important decisions you will ever make for promoting your business

However, there are few things that you should take care: provide work or services to people when it is indispensable. One of the good things about plumbing business is that one can start his own venture by managing works independently that he meets his skills. Furthermore, manage bills on your own when establishing. In case you decide to recruit, provide work to individuals. Also select employees who are experts and have knowledge in the trade.

How to Excel In One’s Newly Established Business Model.

Every time a person thinks of beginning a new business, there are several hinders in his path. Improper planning is one of those obstacles. Complex and tough software does not solve the problem either. Plumbing has various aspects are these aspects form the very basis of the business plans. These are the fool-proof and tested methods that help in making a business successful. A proper planning is of utmost requirement by any company. Every dimension of a business needs planning. Plumbing business is no different and gets an easy road in accomplishing the goals. Planning also helps in decisions that are profitable to the company in every sense.

Designing the whole plumbing plan can be a very tedious task and it requires much effort. It can actually be considered to be the most essential stage in the launch of a plumbing trade. It can be really expensive if the company seeks outer help in designing the plans. For this reason, there are several websites that offer their services at a much cheaper cost. Also websites are easy to use and are fast as well. Team building, time management, marketing and customer services are extremely vital for a company to work properly. It proves to be beneficial if a regular check is maintained for all these activities. This allows the company to assess the performance of the workers and tells them what exactly needs to be worked on.

A plumbing business plan is actually advantageous in many senses. It definitely helps you develop your business but it also assists you in other areas as well. It helps you to make your mind when your company actually starts working. It organizes all the concepts for you. It simplifies all the work and tells you where the problem is. The most important advantage of planning is that is makes you focus on your ultimate goal and take you closer to it.

The Pros of Preparing a Plumbing Business Plan

The Business Plan of plumbing business is essentially meant for the regulated and planned development of your business:

It mentally prepares the people and makes them realize about when the trade will be commercially practicable.

Brush up your concepts and search a layout.

It simplifies the business principles to the person himself and also conveys them to his partner or staff.

It envisages the potential of the business and makes sure that the goals of the company are fulfilled in every condition without any difficulty.

An effective strategy is designed for your business along with its marketing plans.

Makes you focus on your ultimate goal and targets.

There is actually more than just one way to be associated with plumbing profession. You can be a supplier of the plumbing equipments, a business entrepreneur or a vender for tools and gadgets. To start a business, it should always be cleared that you have all the necessary license and registrations done.