Practice Help

Did you submit Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) data for the 2018 Quality Payment Program (QPP) and feel like you deserve some kind of recognition for your hard work all year long? Well, have I got news for you. Apply now for the 2018-19 Physician Practice Quality Improvement Award.

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.

If you prescribe opioids, it’s important to protect your practice and your patients from fraud and substance-use disorder.

One way to ensure that patients accurately follow your prescription is to have them sign an informed consent and opioid treatment agreement.

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?