The Coker Group Programs and Descriptions
Practice Management Topics *denotes a topic that is also relevant to Hospitals
Title	Presenter	Abstract
Designing Physician Compensation Plans*	Max Reiboldt Craig Hunter Keith Solinsky	Physician compensation issues can challenge the harmony of a practice if they are not aligned with practice-related goals and with current and emerging reimbursement systems.  This session presents current compensation options in a predominantly fee-for-service environment, single-specialty compensation incentive models, multispecialty group incentive models, and hospital-sponsored organization (network) group incentive models; compensation in a capitated environment, other provider compensation models (midlevels, allied health providers), and ancillary services compensation.  This is a 60-90 minute session.
Using Sound Incentives to Enhance Employee Morale and Productivity	Max Reiboldt Keith Solinsky	Satisfied employees provide exceptional quality service, but maintaining exceptional service in a cost-conscious environment is increasingly challenging in today’s medical practice.  The secret to practice success is productive employees with a good attitude toward their work.  The levels of stress in the medical practice coupled with a workforce consisting of varied backgrounds, expertise, and education, makes the administrator’s job all the more complex.  Nevertheless, there are many worthwhile opportunities for improving employee morale and productivity through employee incentives and recognition.  This is a 60-90 minute session.
Open Access Scheduling: It Works!	Christine Ingram	Patients who continually “no-show” or come in late can cause a decrease in revenue and interrupt the patient flow for everyone. Open access scheduling can help reduce your no-show rate and keep your patient backlog down.  More and more practices are finding this type of scheduling model more efficient with overall higher patient, staff, and physician satisfaction. (Note: This program can be adapted to cover various scheduling techniques.) This is a 60-90 minute session.
Checking Your Practice’s Vital Signs:  The Importance of Operational Assessments	Keith Solinsky Crystal Reeves	Every medical practice has essential functions that are critical to thriving in a competitive and challenging environment.  Just as you check your patient’s vital signs when they present for an encounter, your practice requires ongoing assessment of its performance.  Do you know your practice’s pulse rate?  This program provides a systematic process for how to complete a full operational assessment of your practice’s vital functions.  Discussions include why assessments are important, what data to gather, who to involve, when and why to use an outside party, and what to do with the results.  This is a 60-90 minute session.
Pay for Performance: The New Playing Field	Max Reiboldt	P4P is an attempt to give incentives to physicians (who both provide care and contract care with others) to reduce variation, utilize best practices, involve themselves in all aspects of the patient’s care, and raise the standard of care. This issue directly affects providers as far as how they will get paid for services to Medicare patients, how much they will get paid, and what kind of time frame in which providers will get paid. Clearly, this issue is of significant concern to healthcare professionals. Participants will gain valuable insight to help them sort through the maze of information and consider the realities of the opportunities promised.  This is a 60-90 minute session.
Hiring and Retaining Top Performing Employees—Fundamentals of Practice Success*	Keith Solinsky Crystal Reeves	Your staff forms the backbone of your organization, and having the right staff is the fundamental requirement of attaining practice success.  Using the knowledge of an experienced practice administrator, this session covers assessing the impact of having the right staff, interviewing to hire the best talent; keeping good people after you have hired them, preventing staff members from losing their edge, and maintaining harmony and discipline. This is a 60-90 minute session.
HSAs, HRAs, and Other High Deductible Health Plans: How They May Affect Patient Behavior and The Practice*	Max Reiboldt	The rapid onset of consumer choice models coupled with high deductible insurance plans give patients more control over their health care spending. Consumer-driven health plans will compel you to look at accounts receivable management as well as the role of physician and business office and how these issues may be affected by these health plans and benefits. Patients who want to be seen may hesitate to get the care that they need due to the out-of-pocket expense. How will patients handle being in total control of where their healthcare dollars go, what will their priorities be and will other resources will be utilized for their healthcare needs? This is a 60-90 minute session.
HSAs and Other Consumer Driven Healthcare--The Employer’s and Administrator’s Viewpoint*	Max Reiboldt	An increasing number of employers are considering adopting HSAs or other high deductible health plans.  From the employer’s perspective, this program gives insight to practice administrators for analyzing this option and provides steps for successful transition from traditional plans to HDHPs. From the provider’s viewpoint, practice administrators must be ready to make “deals” in the consumer-driven environment.  Some patients may want to negotiate your fees, while others will defer needed care due to high out-of-pocket expense.  The rise in popularity of the new models will compel you to amend billing and collection policies. This is a 60-90 minute session.
Medical Practice Staffing—Is it Luck or Logic?	Keith Solinsky Crystal Reeves	Do you depend on luck or logic to staff your medical practice?  Some practices seem fortunate in having a well-balanced staff—not too large and not too small.  Many medical groups stretch their staff too thinly to reduce operating costs.  This strategy constrains productivity, however, and ultimately reduces revenue.  Other practices have too large a staff, which wastes precious dollars in high personnel costs.  Good staffing strategies are not something that happens by chance.  Rather, well-balanced staffing is a series of logical consequences. This is a 60-90 minute session.
Medical Practice Staffing—Using Data to Benchmark Staffing Levels	Keith Solinsky	Many medical groups stretch their staff too thinly to reduce operating costs.  This strategy constrains productivity, however, and ultimately reduces revenue.  Other practices have too many staff, which wastes precious dollars in high personnel costs.  This presentation examines staffing from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives.  Using data from survey reports, this presentation illustrates performance of medical groups at different staffing levels.  An operational analysis describes how to maximize practice performance and make the best use of the physician’s time. This is a 60-90 minute session.
Appointment Scheduling and Patient-Flow Improvement to Boost your Bottom Line	Christine Ingram	Patients who continually “no-show” or come in late can cause a decrease in revenue and interrupt the patient flow for everyone. Open access scheduling can help reduce your no-show rate and keep your patient backlog down.  More and more practices are finding this type of scheduling model more efficient with overall higher patient, staff, and physician satisfaction. This is a 60-90 minute session.
Auditing E/M Coding to Enhance Practice Revenue and Compliance	Jeannie Cagle Crystal Reeves	E/M coding is an essential part of your practice’s revenue cycle and it is also on the OIG’s hit list.  Now, it is more important now than ever to accurately report these codes.  Conducting an E/M audit will help your practice enhance its revenue and stay under the OIG’s radar. This is a 60-90 minute session.
Coding Guidelines and EMR—Can You Believe Vendor Promises?	Jeannie Cagle	EMR vendors lavish physicians and practice management executives with promises to make the practice run smoothly.  Some assure that their software eliminates the physician's frustration of having to know ever-changing coding guidelines by assigning or suggesting appropriate codes.  Can this be true and how do you know for sure?  Will your new EMR progress note stand the test of a Medicare audit?  Participants will be able to sort through vendor promises to recognize the appropriate system for identifying codes; determine if the EMR-provided templates meet CPT/CMS coding criteria, determine if the printed progress note will stand under audit scrutiny; etc.  This is a 60-90 minute session.
Consumer-Driven Healthcare: Medical Consumerism Is Here	Keith Solinsky Max Reiboldt	Managed care was designed to put control where there was none.  Today’s trend towards consumerism attempts to inject something that’s been missing from health benefits—a consumer who cares more about cost and quality.  This is a 60-90 minute session.
Delivering Exceptional Customer Service*	Keith Solinsky Crystal Reeves	Exceptional service is what today’s healthcare consumer seeks from providers.  They must be “delighted”—even surprised by having their needs not just met, but exceeded. This lively session uncovers how you can lead your practice to service excellence while keeping an eye on the bottom line.  Beginning with defining “who are our customers” and moving through the entire “customer” experience, this session gives practical methods for handling difficult scenarios, and delivering “knock-your-socks-off customer service.”  This is a 60-90 minute session.
Starting and Developing a New Medical Practice:  Creating a Foundation for Success	Max Reiboldt Crystal Reeves Keith Solinsky Cindy Cox Christine Ingram	Reasons, questions, time lines, pro formas, revenue and expense assumptions—these are the beginning process for practice start-up. Then comes the decision of the business entity and numerous financial and reimbursement issues to explore and decide. Location and staffing along with equipment selection and marketing give you a feel for the vast information the physician must have in order to get off to a good start. The session provides several tools that will become vital, once implemented, to the daily operations of the practice.  This is a 60-90 minute session.
Understanding the Needs of a Medical Practice	Max Reiboldt Crystal Reeves Keith Solinsky Christine Ingram Cindy Cox	This presentation addresses four core areas of medical practice:  coding, compliance, compensation, and billing and collections. The presenter gives an overview of each of these areas and explains the key role they play in practice management.  This is a 60-90 minute session.
Attaining and Achieving Practice Benchmarks	Max Reiboldt Keith Solinsky	Beginning with a definition of practice benchmarks, this program presents the why’s and what’s of the various indicators of practice performance (e.g., productivity, A/R, staffing, etc.) and also gives the where’s to get them.  This is a 60-90 minute session.
Taking Financial Management to the Next Level: A 10-Part Series	Max Reiboldt Keith Solinsky Jeffery Daigrepont Craig Hunter	Starting with a basic understanding of financial statements and procedures, this 10-part, 2 day program takes you through a step-by-step guide to achieving sound financial practices throughout every aspect of managing a health care organization.    o        Part 1 encompasses understanding financial statements and reporting practice operating results. Explanations include theories, purpose, practicality, P/L statements, and variance analysis with some practice applications and examples to use and an explanation of the impact. Using indicators, you can determine the impact the results will have on the near and long term performance of your practice.    o        Part 2 addresses the revenue cycle—both external and internal, revenue maximization, revenue analysis, procedural coding analysis, and A/R management. Compliance and monitoring are also a part of the information presented in this program.    o        The expense review session, Part 3, encompasses developing a cost management system, expense management, and value-based cost management.   o        Parts 4 and 5 deal with leveraging technology to financially manage the practice. This session explores case studies of positive financial outcomes driven by technology.   o        Two keys to financial management—Ratios and Benchmarking the Medical Practice—are the topics covered in Part 6.   o        Reengineering/Efficient Operations and Billing are the subjects considered in Part 7. The presenter uses several case studies to make key points on financial management.   o        Part 8 of the financial management series addresses overhead controls and internal safeguards. Topics are internal control issues; cost containment—controlling overhead; improving financial performance through physician network audits, and insurance.   o        Cash flow management and pro forma income statement projections are the focus of Part 9. Budgets are tied to pro formas to produce meaningful guidance for the financial management of the medical practice. This session provides many useful tools for estimating capital needs and for developing and operating within a budget.   o        Part 10 covers developing a strategic initiative and writing a realistic, usable practice business plan. Topics covered extensively in this session are strategic planning and business plans.
Coding and Reimbursement, Part 1—Enhanced Compliance	Jeannie Cagle Crystal Reeves Christine Ingram Cindy Cox	This session addresses three risk areas that physicians face with each patient encounter:  clinical, compliance, and financial. The program provides a coding overview, E/M services, modifiers, and diagnosis codes, and explains how coding relates to reimbursement. The presentation clearly portrays how coding and documentation go hand in hand.
Coding and Reimbursement, Part 2—Non-Physician Practitioner Coding	Jeannie Cagle Crystal Reeves Christine Ingram Cindy Cox	NPPs are providers who generally focus on the technical or specialized aspect of patient care. Learn in this session how to sort through the confusion and avoid the risks associated with billing for NPPs’ services. The presenter gives specific codes and examples that will be helpful in the day-to-day coding challenges wrought by this aspect of coding.  This is a 60-90 minute session.