Six Sigma Blogs

Negotiate Are you dying with envy when you see other ad people come up with a better offer? Yeah, you pay full price and think you did OK until they show up with the same thing, only they paid several hundred dollars less. What’s their secret? They’re not afraid to ask for an extra discount.

Next time your advertising rep pops over, do not in any instance sell yourself short or underestimate your capabilities! Even if you’re already getting a discount, ask for a bigger one. Ask, ask, ask, and if we may repeat it again, ASK!

Keep It Simple, Silly! Less is more. In the world of advertising, nothing can be farther from the truth - short and punchy ads are generally more successful than large, elaborate ones. In fact, if you trim down the size of your ads, you are also cutting costs while at the same time having a good chance of good results!

The Best Things In Advertising Are Free What’s the difference between advertising and publicity? It’s a matter of who sells who. Advertising is basically selling yourself. Publicity, on the other hand, is when somebody else is selling you, and if handled properly, can make you a rock star in the world of business if you know how to take advantage of what’s handed to you.

Think about it, my friend - you could be bigger than the Beatles in business terms if you can take advantage of what comes free to you. Got hot news? Go for a press release. Write a “how to” article of 500 words or so with a short byline (VERY important) and submit them to article directories, ezines, blog sites and the like. You can even promote your non-competitor as they promote your product. You help each other out, and again, everybody wins!

That’s right, amigo, if you play your cards right, free advertisement can aid your business in many ways. Naturally you’ll have to rely on other forms of advertising for a price, but come on, if it’s free and can benefit you, why pass it up?

Improve Your Offer Is your deal too good to pass up? If you don’t, then work on it. Don’t get me wrong - I didn’t say knock down the prices even lower, because the bottom line is still important. Sweetening the deal is all about adding value to the product by enhancing what consumers already know and teaching them more about the product without having to pay much.

Add an expiration date. Yeah, an open ended offer encourages procrastination which leads, yep, nowhere. It leads to Nowheresville, USA, but if you take advantage of the expiration date to entice a customer to buy now or pay more the day after, he or she is going to drop everything, pop over at your shop and make that purchase! Good advertising does not necessarily equal expensive and flashy advertising. To recap, it’s all about good negotiating skills, trimming down your high-falluting ads, asking for bigger discounts and making an offer not even Don Vito himself can refuse - take note of these four steps and your profits have nowhere to go but up!

Join HRU for programs that focus on emergency triage and nurses leadership. An HRU seminar is a great educational investment for your nursing staff.

If you are considering a building project, be it a new home or the renovation of your existing home, you will need some sort of building plans. There are three ways you can go about obtaining these plans:

1. Purchase one of the many home design software programs - learn to use it and then go about designing it yourself. You will be thrilled with the capabilities of these programs. With some practice and study you will be able to work out floor layouts, exterior views and the like. These can be used for visualization, possibly for obtaining preliminary bids from contractors and to accurately explain your intentions to an Architect or Design Engineer for final construction plans. There are numerous programs available. My personal favorite is from Chief Architect (you can find them on the internet and download the program).

2.You can visit one of the home plan warehouses on the internet. They will often have 10’s of thousands of plans which you can review and from which you can choose an excellent design. These plans generally run about $800 to $1000 to purchase. This does not work for renovations, but is a decent choice for new plans.

3.The third is to hire a professional. These professionals can be excellent designer/draftsmen, or Architects or Engineer Designers who specialize both design and the Engineering. There are many talented folks out there and this is, really, the most thorough and best way to get the custom design you really want.

Of course combinations of the above will work as well. You can review the on-line plans, get your own software, and create a great starting point for the professional designer with whom you decide to ultimately work.

Keep in mind that the plans will need to be engineered and be detailed sufficiently to obtain permits and to be built. It takes experience and training to do this. The plans that you purchase from the warehouses usually lack the required details and always lack the required engineering. If you buy one of these be prepared to hire someone to add the essential ingredients and to certify the plans. You’ll likely want some changes as well.

Any combination of the above, as long as you ultimately get a professional to finalize, review and seal the plans, you’ll find yourself enjoying one of the most rewarding experience there is.

Ken Risley, an expert in residential home design, is a Professional Architectural Engineer, and an Award Winning Designer since 1982. He designs through out the U.S. and the Caribbean. Learn more about this Engineer and Designer Today.

With the Holiday Season being full of shopping, house cleaning, attending parties, hosting parties, family needs and more, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. While everyone seems to love the festivities, I’m sure most of us are glad they are over and we can finally breath.

Actually, I think most people feel overwhelmed a good majority of the time, regardless of the time of year. There is so much commanding our attention that it can be extremely difficult to stay focused and get things done.

It’s been said that over 3,000 advertising messages are brought to our attention a day. With all of these messages comes the skill of tuning things out around us, which we have perfected.

We communicate faster than ever. Our inboxes are constantly at full capacity. Our cell phones constantly chirping breaking our focus. You may have said “The check is in the mail,” but not in today’s world! It barely means a thing now. In fact, newer generations might not even know what that means.

Because this this lightening fast lifestyle, you indefinitely have customers, patients or clients who want things done instantly. Not tomorrow or the next day, but this minute. This type of service is expected in this life and it’s also expected that we can provide it.

It’s no wonder we feel like we can’t keep up! We can’t!

Luckily, our clients seem to be in the same boat and can’t get their work load completed on time either. When our clients initially call us, it’s because they are looking for a quick fix to their problems. They want a solution to their marketing woes so they can focus on what’s really important to them, which is whatever is what they do best and that’s not necessarily marketing. They want to be able to pass on the work and have someone else take charge and get it done. Our customers want their marketing strategy to be stress-free, cost effective and easy. They don’t want any worry, hassles or excuses.

This is something all clients want, even yours. Provide an EASY solution to your clients hurdles. Show your clients how you can save them money, worry, time, stress, blood, sweat and tears with whatever it is you specialize in. We make our clients’ lives EASIER with our Ready2Go Client Contact. We can also provide EXTREME EASE to their marketing with our one-on-one consulting.

Provide your clients, patients and customers with an EASY solution and show them how EASY you are to work with. You will be their business angel in disguise. This will make your life and their life EASIER and HAPPIER.

Kathy Jiamboi has 14+ years expertise in Relationship and Direct Response Marketing and is CEO of Creativedge Marketing and Ready2Go Client Contact, in Cleveland, Ohio. Ready2Go Client Contact, a done for you program allows her customers to smoothly and swiftly build client affinity. She provides FREE expert marketing tips to anyone looking to get more customers.

Besides a satisfied current customer, the next easiest person to sell your products and services to is a referral. Referrals can be an inexpensive source of new revenue. They come to you pre-qualified and pre-sold, will typically spend more money, and will refer others to you since they were referred.

So how do you get them? The best and easiest way to get a referral is to ask for them when the client is most receptive. Most often this time is when they are “basking in the glory” of their purchase. That sounds simple. Yet many businesses don’t take advantage of this untapped “word of mouth” resource.

The best way to gain referrals is to put a multi-step referral process into place within your business.

First, make a list of all of the ways you can communicate to everyone you are in contact with, ie: friends, family, clients, vendors, competitors, groups you are a member of, etc. Then, devise how you will connect with these groups and ask for referrals. If you can establish a few processes of getting referrals, you will receive far more than you are now. Think about how that might effect your business. Also, think about how much time and money you will save from not having to prospect and market to new clients.

Here are a few ideas to get referrals-

Give something for the referral. If you can’t give something away, offer a free service or offer to make a donation to a their favorite charity in their name.

Give your new referral services or products at discount on behalf of the person who referred them.

After your client has provided you with a specific number of referrals, offer them a special deal or discount.

Have your clients agree that if they are 100% satisfied at the end of their transaction that they will provide you with two referrals. But don’t forget to follow up on their promise!

Create a list of business and/or individuals you may want to do business with and see who among your circle can introduce you to them or better yet refer your services to them.

Ask your clients to pass out cards with their name on it to their friends and family highlighting your services. Each time a card is redeemed, your referrer receives a reward or discount towards their future business with you.

Send your client some type of thank you gift to their office. When others see what they have received, they will inquire, leading to referrals.

Offer a stepping-stone referral plan. The more referrals the client provides, the more rewards they receive. This works well because usually if a client refers once, they will refer again.

There’s a chance a lot of your business is already coming from “word of mouth.” With a referral plan implemented, this gives you the opportunity with a inexpensive, easy way to get new business and increase business and profits.

Is your business utilizing a referral program right now? If it’s bringing you success, we’d love to hear about it.

Kathy Jiamboi has 14+ years expertise in Relationship and Direct Response Marketing and is President of Creativedge Marketing and Ready2Go Client Contact, in Cleveland, Ohio. Ready2Go Client Contact, a done for you program, allows her clients to simply and swiftly boost client affinity. She provides FREE expert marketing tips to anyone looking to gain more clients.

What makes an effective leader? Many people might say character, leadership style, and values define an effective leader. However, it is not enough to measure the effectiveness of a leader based on character, style, and values alone. These attributes should not be the only criteria in evaluating the effectiveness of a leader in any organization. Effective leadership takes more than just analytic thinking, personal integrity, and working with ambiguity. An effective leader should also learn how to connect these attributes with leadership results.

Many of us might have learned from college or from a management book the formula for results based leadership involves attributes, results, and effective leadership. This can be better illustrated as effective leadership = attributes x results. It is not merely the inputs of leadership that organizations and leaders must give importance to - leaders must also think about outcomes or results and organizations should start learning how to put stress or emphasis on the outcomes of leadership.

It has always been a challenge for organizations to make its people have a better understanding of results based leadership. And it has always been a challenge for executives, managers, and human resources personnel to help develop leaders (in different levels of the organizations) who are able to focus on both attributes and results. To help organizations have a deeper understanding and appreciation of leadership that is based on results, it is recommended that executives and managers should continually ask for things that are required for attaining results and recurrently tell stories about how to get results.

There are four ways by which we can evaluate whether or not leaders are observing and exhibiting results based leadership. Results must help balance the employees, organization, customers, and investors - and it must not ignore any one. Results must also be able to strongly connect to the strategy of the organization, as well as its competitive position. It should also meet both short-term and long-term goals, and it must not sacrifice long-term plans. Moreover, results must support the whole organization and should go beyond the personal gain of the manager, executive or any other leader.

There are also four areas by which results based leadership can be delivered - for employees, for the organization, for its customers, and for its investors. There are certain metrics for each of these areas, and they should all be taken into consideration if a leader wants to deliver results.

CMOE has been helping companies with coaching skills since 1978. Through developing coaching workshop and other innovative business techniques CMOE has established themselves a leader in the business world. Visit www.cmoe.com for more information.

It’s important to know how many physicians your medical billing company serves, because it gives you an idea of the company’s scale — and in this industry, scale is key.

For instance, If a $150,000 per year billing system administrator is required, then a medical claims billing company with 200 clients only needs each of its client to carry $750 per year of that person’s cost. If a practice of four providers employed this person, then each provider would need to carry $37,500 per year of that person’s cost; this is the value of scale. A medical practice can achieve significant advantages by leveraging the superior scale of a mid- to large-sized medical insurance billing company.

A good medical company uses resources and technology that stand-alone medical practices can’t afford to support. Here are some examples of such resources and technology:

- A state-of-the-art billing system, offering advanced reporting and claim management capabilities. Such systems are often too expensive for a small to medium sized medical practice to afford; so they select a sub-standard system that they can afford.

- A pre-submission claim scrubber that applies the payers’ adjudication rules before the claims ever leave the medical insurance billing services four walls.

- Competent billing system managers, who stay up-to-date with the regularly-changing rules used by payers. A good system manager can help you collect on claims caught up in the system because of changing rules.

- Advanced collection tools, such as predicting payment yields from patients (such as the amount the patient owes times the likelihood they’ll pay).

- Deep rosters that won’t slow down when the company loses a single employee (which most practices are likely to experience).

- A dedicated group of individuals that follow-up on claims that have not had a response from the payer within a reasonable time frame.

These and other advantages show that most medical practices can’t afford the personnel and technology to match the services that a good, properly scaled medical billing company provides.

Most of the costs of maintaining these technologies and procedures are fixed, so medical billing companies tend to distribute the costs among their clients. This is why bigger medical billing companies can afford to serve practices better than smaller ones. Smaller medical billing companies may struggle to simply keep up with developing industry technology.

In conclusion, selecting a medical claims billing company that has the scale to deploy sophisticated technology and processes can provide the average medical practice a huge advantage in terms of their ability to do battle with the payers that are working hard to keep every penny they can.

Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II

Are you sure your insurance companies are paying you according to your contracts? You may be surprised to know that it’s unlikely that they are. The average medical practice loses approximately five to ten percent of their collections because most insurance underpayments are never pursued or even identified.

A recent National Health Insurer Report Card compiled by the American Medical Association measured payment accuracy of seven major payers: Aetna, Anthem BCBS, Cigna, Coventry, Human, United Healthcare and Medicare. All of these payers to some degree strayed from contracted payment rate.

The worst offender was United (did not pay contracted rate in 38.4% of cases), followed by Cigna (did not pay contracted rate in 33.8% of cases), Aetna (did not pay contracted rate in 29.2% of cases), Anthem BCBS (did not pay contracted rate in 27.9% of cases), Humana (did not pay contracted rate in 15.8% of cases) and Coventry (did not pay contracted rate in 13.3% of cases). Even Medicare missed contracted payment rates in almost 2% of cases.

Tracking these underpayments is tricky. If you watch many different medical practices, you’ll find the same CPTs receiving underpayments, at around the same deficiency, from the same payer, and around the same period of time. But after a month, you may find the payer playing the game with different groups of CPTs to avoid being spotted.

Most underpayments aren’t substantial when considered one by one, but they can accumulate to thousands of dollars in the long run for any medical practice. Payers use a combination of switching the CPTs being underpaid every month and keeping underpayment amounts too small to attract notice, which makes these underpayments hard to spot.

Medical billing services may have difficulty finding these underpayments without comparing them with your contracted rates, as well as dealing with multiple procedure complications properly. Dealing with multiple complicated tables can be a challenge.

Billing services (and medical practices with their own in-house billing solutions) need to get and utilize industry technology to identify and correct underpayments. Most systems today are incapable of providing a workable solution.

Despite the complexity, however, it is worth solving this problem. Comparison of payments to allowables can increase a medical practice’s collections by 5 to 10 percent. This of course requires a strong process, powerful reporting technology and ability to track complex procedures methodically-in the end, it can however add thousands of dollars to your bottom line.

2009 copyright by Carl Mays II

Carl Mays is President and CEO of ClaimCare, a medical billing company that services clients across the nation. Carl is an expert in medical billing and physician practice management. He has an MBA from Wharton and a BSE from Princeton University.

A recent Medical Group Management Association survey showed that medical practices utilizing medical billing companies typical see improved performance across multiple dimensions. The survey focused on practices that used medical billing companies instead of in-house billing solutions.

Here are some of the interesting facts that the survey revealed:

- 73 percent of practices using medical billing companies reduce their AR;

- 73 percent also received higher collection rates;

- About three in every five practices have fewer denied or lost claims;

- 59 percent enjoyed significantly better reporting and practice performance insights; and

- Almost half experienced better staff productivity.

The MGMA study found that more than three out of every four practices that employ the services of a good medical billing company enjoy impressive improvements in productivity and performance. This confirms the long-held notion that utilizing a medical billing company improves a medical practice’s performance.

Some of the more obvious benefits of using a medical billing company include the following:

1. Medical billing companies have more scale to purchase and deploy the technologies required to properly submit claims, battle with insurance companies and collect personal balances.

2. A medical billing company can attract a higher caliber of billing specialists and retain these individuals.

3. Medical billing companies keep a deep bench of employees, so their clients don’t have to deal with the risk of losing a key billing employee from an in-house billing solution.

4. Billing companies are better positioned to properly utilize the technology they have.

5. Medical billing companies have a broader view of the medical industry as a whole because they deal with many different medical professionals at the same time. This knowledge helps them deliver better services to their clients.

If you’d like to see the survey for yourself, check the MGMA website.

Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II

Before deciding upon a medical billing service be sure to visit ClaimCare’s Website. It provides in depth information about outsourcing medical billing. Carl Mays is a national renowned expert on medical billing operations and revenue cycle management.

A recent Medical Group Management Association survey showed that medical practices utilizing medical billing companies typical see improved performance across multiple dimensions. The survey focused on practices that used medical billing companies instead of in-house billing solutions.

The survey found that for practices switching from in-house billing to a medical billing company:

- Almost three in four practices that use medical billing companies reduce their AR;

- 73 percent realized higher collections;

- About three in every five practices have fewer denied or lost claims;

- 59 percent cited improved reporting and practice performance insights; and

- Almost half experienced better staff productivity.

The MGMA study found that more than three out of every four practices that employ the services of a good medical billing company enjoy impressive improvements in productivity and performance. This confirms the long-held notion that utilizing a medical billing company improves a medical practice’s performance.

This is not a surprise since medical billing companies have several advantages over most in-house billing solutions:

1. Medical billing companies are often better-armed to buy and use technology to submit claims properly, deal with insurance companies, and collect on personal balances.

2. A medical billing company can attract a higher caliber of billing specialists and retain these individuals.

3. Billing services keep a deep employee roster, giving medical practices the security that an in-house billing system can’t. For instance, practices using a medical billing company won’t face the risk of losing a key employee in the billing department.

4. Billing companies are better positioned to properly utilize the technology they have.

5. Medical billing companies have a broader view of the medical industry as a whole because they deal with many different medical professionals at the same time. This knowledge helps them deliver better services to their clients.

A copy of the survey is available from the MGMA’s website.

Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II

Before deciding upon a medical billing service be sure to visit ClaimCare’s Website. It provides in depth information about outsourcing medical billing. Carl Mays is a national renowned expert on medical billing operations and revenue cycle management.

Any strong medical billing process and medical billing company must compare insurance payments to your contractual allowables and aggressively pursue underpayments. If this is not happening then most likely 5 to 10% of your practice’s revenue is being lost.

Medical billing services have a number of basic steps they should incorporate into their billing process. These steps should include using a claims scrubber, use of no-response calls, posting zero pays, pursuing underpayments, and using likelihood of payment scores for patient collections.

This article focuses on just one of the key elements you need from your medical billing service: pursuit of underpayments. Pursuit of underpayments starts with a critical step: comparison of EOBs to your contractual allowables (the payment your payers have agreed to make for each CPT code). You cannot count on payment posters to catch underpayments with their naked eye; the comparison must be automated and systematic. It goes without saying that if you do billing in-house the comparison still should be done.

The reason that comparison to allowables must be automated is because of the clever and systematic manner in which payers typically underpay claims. These underpayment patterns can be difficult to spot, but one of the advantages a Medical Insurance Billing Service has is that it sees payment information and patterns across many clients for many payers. This allows medical claims billing services that regularly and systematically compare payments to contractual allowables to spot patterns that a single practice might miss.

A pattern that is often seen by billing companies is one where a payer will underpay the same codes across multiple providers by the same dollar amount in month one. Then in month two, the payer will resume paying the code correctly and will begin to underpay a different code (or codes) across multiple clients.

These underpayments are not huge (5 to 10 percent) but they add up quickly to big dollars for a medical practice. The combination of switching the codes being underpaid from month-to-month and keeping the underpayment amount “under the radar” can make the underpayments difficult for an individual practice to spot.

Needless to say, it would be difficult for a payment poster to remember enough about the allowed amounts across a practice’s tens of payers and dozens of CPTs to spot the underpayment strategy described above. This is why it is critical that automated comparisons be performed by your medical billing service.

What does all of this mean to your top line? A medical insurance billing service that properly implements the pursuit of underpayments can increase your revenue by between 5 and 10 percent - and this is pure profit.

Spotting the underpayment is only part of the battle, of course, the billing service also needs to have a systemic process in place for pursuing the underpayments. It is critical to pursue event the small underpayment amounts. Once a payer sees that their resources are being tied up readjudicating claims because of a $5.00 underpayment, the underpayments will often cease to happen.

Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II