Six Sigma Blogs

Time management is very important in this busy world. Some people think that it just come naturally. However, some say that it is an acquired skill. Whichever is true, you have to consider the following tips and you will learn to manage everything:

One effective tip is to create a daily schedule. You have to list down all the things that you need to do everyday. It will help you guide and remind you in your daily activities. Through this , you can save time of thinking what is the next thing to do and likewise, prevents you from forgetting a very important meeting or an appointment..

You have to consider also the alertness of your mind when you create your daily schedule. If you are more active in the morning, you schedule all the difficult tasks in the morning. At least you have the full energy to focus those activities.

To avoid becoming stressed, schedule some down-time with friends and family. Time management is all about balance, not about being a workaholic.

You may schedule for an evening date with your special someone, spouse or a lover if you are single, or a lunch with a friend. Or a drop by visit to your parents after work in the afternoon. In this manner, your professional life and personal life is balanced. Life could be so boring if you don’t know how to balance it.

Try to think from the most important task to the least one to do that day. Do first the necessary ones and if possible, delegate to others the less important. If you have no more time, just eliminate or take away in your list those things that are not essential.

Don’t procrastinate. Once you’ve planned a schedule for the day, stick to it as much as possible. When it’s time to shift to the next task, do so. Don’t linger on perfecting a previous task. Perfection might sound like a good idea when in fact, perfection and procrastination are enemies of time management.

A good rule of thumb to follow in time management is Pareto’s Principle. This states that 80 percent of accomplishments should be derived from 20 percent of efforts. You can apply this to your schedule by focusing on tasks that offer the most productivity.

The tips above are simple yet effective. Hopefully these can help you lead a more balanced and less stressful life.

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The traditional approach to branding, as far as I can tell, goes something like this:

1. List your key strengths and abilities
2. Define what it is that you are offering
3. Define your market
4. Link steps 1 and 2 to step 3

Voila! Sounds logical enough - the one problem is that there is one key ingredient missing - you!

The other day I was having lunch in a very charming, atmospheric, French restaurant in Toronto, and struck up a conversation with its owner/creator, Ellie. We got on to the topic of branding. In the case of Ellie’s restaurant, taking a broad brush approach one might describe it as French country. If we were to get a little more specific, we could highlight some of his specialty dishes. Taking it to a more sophisticated level we could take an integrated approach to the dining experience- describing it as creating an authentic French atmosphere, being in France while still being in our own city, etc.

But in the end what makes his restaurant so very appealing, the experience so enjoyable - Ellie, himself! It is the Ellie-ness of every aspect of the restaurants - the dcor, the cuisine, and the eccentric, yet professional, service staff- that makes the experience uniquely pleasurable.

The beauty of this approach is its simplicity and its honesty. I firmly believe that it is the only approach that makes any sense. It maintains your integrity, you are always giving what you are promising- which is you. It makes you happy, as there is nothing more fulfilling than having those around us acknowledge our own special-ness. Finally, it is the only approach to branding actually sustainable in the long run.

As self evident as this may sound, trying to be something else, or someone else, is absolutely crazy. It is stressful. It is tiring. It is not fulfilling. It is impossible to keep up. Yet for so many people, when they go about trying to make themselves presentable and marketable, that is precisely what they do.

The beauty of this approach is that those customers who buy your offering are buying something that you, and only you, can deliver. This means that you are competing in a micro-market where yours is the sole offering. So long as you continue to place your passion and energy into what you are doing, your brand can only strengthen over time.

In my next instalment in this series I shall describe how to begin this process; drawing upon the best reference I can think of - my own personal experience!

I would like to close with my favourite quotation from Shakespeare-

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. .

John Berling Hardy has dedicated himself to providing his clients with effective strategies with which to deal with the Players they encounter in both the personal and business lives www.playingtheplayers.com

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