The Georgia Scroll
October 1997
An important goal of HFMA is to further diversify the membership to reflect the changes that are taking place in healthcare. HFMA has undertaken an official collaboration with the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA). Physician centers can include freestanding ambulatory centers, medical group practices, physician offices and surgery centers.
Today's physician practice is characterized by tremendous, fast-paced change. As many practices either consolidate and/or move to managed care arrangements, physicians have less control over their income, medical decisions, office policies, and other issues. Finance is becoming the primary driver in decision making. Financial issues range from operations, salary, and overhead to structuring mergers and affiliations. Practice executives who were surveyed by HFMA listed financial planning, forecasting, cost accounting, capitation, managed care contracting, reimbursement, cost reduction and tax issues as important.
Obviously, information is critical to successfully handling these tasks. Many vendors have developed more sophisticated practice management systems and other healthcare organizations such as hospitals, managed care organizations and Medicare have also upgraded their systems abilities to monitor utilization and billing practices of physicians. The 1996 Medicare Correct Coding Policy culminates HCFA's plans to monitor claims coding, edited to their specific requirements. Administar Federal developed a code matrix with potential for 100,000 edits to be used in Medicare carriers claims processing systems.
Peggy Garrett, Director of Consulting for Key Solutions, the Healthcare Consulting Division of Harris Kovacs Alderman in Atlanta, points out the importance of quality as well as cost. Ms. Garrett suggests maintaining a "Quality File" including credentials information; monthly or quarterly assessments/audits of charts at random; patient satisfaction surveys which sometimes can be aided by hospitals; treatment protocol projects, hospital and regional comparisons of utilization, cost and ALOS, and other items. Brochures, newsletters or letters can provide information on practice quality to patients, managed care organizations, employers and other appropriate audiences.
HFMA, on both a national and local level, offers a wide array of tools and professional development opportunities to help practice managers and executives meet the vast challenges and opportunities of a dynamic and more sophisticated environment. The Georgia Chapter which has won numerous first place HFMA awards in recent years in addition to workshops and newsletters, offers four state educational conferences each year:
These include high quality, timely information on Physician Practice Management, Managed Care, Patient Financial Services, and Accounting and Auditing.
Examples of HFMA national professional development includes:
Anyone interested in membership, please contact Jonathan Fite at Athens Regional Medical Center, 1199 Price Avenue, Athens, Georgia or by phone at (706) 354-3427.