Practice Help

TMA finally received clarification from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services: Compliance is indeed mandatory and there are possible punishments for noncompliance.

Arbitrary. Confusing. Frustrating. Never-ending. Maddening. Those are some of the terms we can actually print that describe physicians’ perceptions of insurance companies’ prior authorization requirements and approval processes.

Your personal stories of patient harm due to prior authorization request delays or denials can give the Texas Medical Association the ammunition it needs to fight this problem. 

To combat the ongoing opioid crisis, state lawmakers passed several measures that change how physicians and other health care professionals will prescribe opioids.

The new laws are designed to reduce prescription fraud, particularly by increasing prescribers’ use of the state’s Prescription Monitoring Program, known as PMP Aware. 

However, provisions of the laws take effect at different times, so prescribers should be aware of the deadlines and effective dates of each requirement. 

When Samuel Foster, MD, and his wife Roshni Foster, MD, bought a Denton-area allergy and asthma practice in 2015, they found out quickly that the practice didn’t make a very good first impression for anyone looking it up online.

“One of our [three] offices was listed on Google Maps as permanently closed,” Dr. Samuel Foster said. “That’s a case where you’re potentially losing business — losing patients — who are searching for you on the most important search engine out there.”

The new owners of North Texas Allergy and Asthma Center found other online problems, and the next few months became a crash course in reputation management.

Whether you own your medical practice or are a partner in a group, your business absolutely must have clear financial policies and procedures in place.

Financial policies aren’t the most fun to read or write, but they can make or break your practice. Without them, you’re essentially enabling patients to set policies for you, and that de facto policy might involve chasing down patient balances and tolerating high accounts receivable.

In a medical practice, physicians, administrators, managers, and other staff may all be responsible for maintaining compliance with state and federal laws and regulations. The Texas Medical Association offers several resources, tools, and even discounts on compliance services to help keep your practice compliant.

How well do you understand Texas’ new laws and regulations relating to telemedicine? For instance, if I asked you how telemedicine is different from telehealth, would you know which can be done only by a physician? (Hint: It’s the one with an “m” in it.)

What if I asked you to list the special requirements for issuing a prescription through telemedicine?