Deloitte Access Economics released a report that shows that hospital house calls in Australia  cut spending by a third. “Faced with rising healthcare costs and response to consumer preferences, most states and territories in Australia already provide acute, sub-acute, and post-acute care in the home, made possible by portable technology, according to the report.”

Dr. Edward Kulich a pediatrician featured in a Wall Street Journal profile, says that making house calls lets him spend more time with his patients and left his private practice to be a traveling doctor.

What do you think about this creative way to turnaround healthcare?

Do you think more hospitals and doctors should start making house calls?

Would you want to be a traveling Doctor?

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Zachary Foundation

Come join Michael Friedberg of HNLY, and other healthcare industry members in support of the Zachary Foundation on October 5, 2011 at the Barry L. Schiff Memorial Healthcare Classic golfing event. 

The Zachary Foundation was founded by the parents and friends of Zachary Friedberg of Morganville, New Jersey who suffers from a rare form of Mitochondrial Disease.

Bring your golf game and come out.

MAS has been in many of The Zachary Foundation golf outings and they have always been a lot of fun. This year they are honoring three of the long time supporters Andrew Goold, VP of The Healthsearch Group, James Y. Lee, FACHE Executive VP and  COO of Lawrence Hospital Center and Adam K. Weinstein, FACHE VP for Regulatory Affairs and Corporate Compliance New York Hospital Queens.

Michael Friedberg who has played an important role in healthcare through the years and deserves our industry’s full support, says “Throughout the years we have been privileged to have support from many people and organizations, it is the commitment of these three individuals that has been the driving force for our success. Their gift to Zachary and children like him who suffer from Mitochondrial Disease has been given not for recognition or personal gain but only due to each of their own selflessness. My family and the entire Mitochondrial Disease community are forever in their debt.”

Registration is still open! I look forward to seeing you there!

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And today… jobs are still the big topic for all of us. In last week’s address to Congress and the country, President Obama laid out his plan for creating jobs. He stated the plan’s core goal: “The purpose of the American Jobs Act is simple: to put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working.”

The speech made me think of Linda McMahon’s quote on how jobs are created, “It’s very simple how you create jobs. An entrepreneur takes risk. He or she believes that they create a good or service that is sold for more than it costs to create it. If an entrepreneur thinks he can do that he creates a job.”

The heart and soul of the economy is small business. If you want to put Americans to work, it seems like a no brainer to begin with small businesses and entrepreneurs of America! We are standing ready to do whatever it takes to get the job done and start pumping some confidence back into the economy. Confident business owners hire.

Some companies may still have a need to send jobs overseas, but with the amount of people looking for work, MAS thinks it makes sense to hire people right here at home.

Small businesses can be creative in their hiring by focusing on their core expertise and outsourcing other job functions to entrepreneurs and consultants.

We use outsourcing to simplify things and be leaner and it’s been very effective for us.  We hire out in key fields like IT, Accounting/CFO and other services for pennies on the dollar–with better results. This lets us focus on  what we’re good at–is medical billing and collections.Trusting our expert consultants has paid off for us.

The biggest win of all is that it’s freed us up to hire people to build our core business and create more local jobs for Americans.

So how can outsourcing to experts help you streamline your business and help boost the economy at the same time?

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We’re more than half way through the year and for most businesses, the summer time is a slow period. Well we think it’s a good time to pull out your SMART goals and do some thinking.

This is our third blog on the subject because we believe that setting SMART Goals is key to business success. We’re not alone. Business coaching experts like entrepreneur mentor Ali Brown who teaches women around the world to grow a profitable business recently wrote a blog post about setting SMART goals

Look at the goals you set in the beginning of the year. How close have you come to hitting them? Did you lay out a clear action plan and are you working that plan?

If you’re year isn’t going the way you’d like, take a look at where you strayed from your plans. Don’t get discouraged. Regroup, and do what you can to get back on track.

If things are going according to plan, let’s look at how you want to close out the year.  Read relevant articles, plan meetings for the Fall. Do what you can to end strong.

Now don’t stop there. This is also a good time to get a jump start on setting your goals for next year. What will 2012 hold for you? What are your plans when your current year SMART goals pay off?

Break through, Don’t let the lazy days of summer catch you in its haze.

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The blog puts a spotlight on the issue saying that  ”some lawmakers in New York State believe that they have come up with a good solution to prevent healthcare-acquired infections.”

Even though the practice was put in place in England about 5 years ago to address a spread of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), doctors in NY feel the measure is unjustified and doesn’t actually impact the spread of infectious diseases.

We’re curious if you agree with the doctors or the lawmakers. Take a look at the blog post and tell us what you think.

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If you’ve never worked a sales position, then you pretty much got paid just for showing up to work, even if you don’t perform your best.  Imagine if the amount of money you earned was directly tied into your level of performance on the job? Most people avoid sales positions because they need the guarantee of steady income and don’t want to be judged on the job.

Lately, a lot of industries are using a pay for performance strategy, including healthcare. Pay for performance can impact the state of the industry by affecting the cost and quality of healthcare. We like to see the healthcare industry is taking a page out of the business handbook.

At MAS, we love the concept and practice it with our Pay 4 Performance guarantee. Our medical billing clients don’t pay us until they get paid. We love accepting the challenge of hitting account receivables and collections goals for our clients.

We see “pay 4 performance” as an incentive produce. We know when we work hard we’ll get paid for the results. Here’s a question for you. Would you “work for performance”? Let us know what you think about the pay for performance concept.

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ACO’s may already be at risk, due to recent budget cutting measures passed by the House of Representatives that would restructure Medicare and Medicaid. If the Ryan budget is fully passed, it will likely start the countdown to the end of Accountable Care Organizations, which were created under the Obamacare law.

Currently Medicare is a “fee for service system” where healthcare providers are paid for each service rendered. At it’s current rate of reimbursement government spending on Medicare increases 7.2 percent each year and is projected to consume every dollar produced in the United States in only a few years.  To try and prevent this, the Ryan budget begins a slow transition away from the current fee for service system to a voucher program that would allow seniors to buy private insurance free of charge.

This move is expected to save billions of dollars in Medicare spending and will guarantee coverage for seniors who otherwise will find themselves exposed when the program runs out of money, while still leaving coverage for those currently on Medicare or nearing retirement unchanged.

As ACOs are currently structured, providers in ACOs receive a portion of every dollar they are able to save Medicare in the form of a bonus.  Under the proposed plan however Medicare would only be buying insurance for people not paying doctors directly, removing the main draw of an ACO for doctors and hospitals ultimately rendering ACOs a thing of the past.

So are ACOs almost a thing of the past before they even become reality? Chime in and let us know what think–post a comment below or on our Facebook page.

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We know that’s a tough pill to swallow. That’s why at MAS we believe strongly that clients shouldn’t pay unless we deliver. That’s the reasoning behind our Pay 4 Performance guarantee- we don’t get paid unless our clients get paid.

If you like the sound of it, click here to learn more about our Pay 4 Performance program.

Even if you’re not one of our medical billing clients, it might give you food for thought the next time you enter into a service contract!

Don’t forget to comment on this post or on our Facebook page to let us know what you think!

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The post talks about how several New Jersey hospitals are touting low wait times in an effort to attract patients to their Emergency Departments, according to a Wall Street Journal report (how entrepreneurial !!)

It reads Bayonne (N.J.) Medical Center recently unveiled two billboards in Jersey City that advertise the hospital’s emergency room wait times.  The billboards are updated with current wait times several times a day.  While Christ Hospital in Jersey City plans to display its wait times on its website.

I am proud of these healthcare institutions for acting on the need in the market to better serve patients (i.e. customers) by streamlining their ED operations,  then creating a product to market  in an advertising campaign.  I am sure a smart phone application is on the way!

Well to the contrary,  I had to go and read Branwen Jeffreys’ blog in the BBC health news Kings Fund: Waiting times in England at three-year high.  The King’s Fund is an English charity that seeks to understand how the health system in England can be improved.  The Kings Fund statistics for February show 15% of patients waited over 18 weeks for treatment, the longest time since April 2008.  It argues the shift is due to the financial pressures on the NHS.

So now, I am wondering if Obamacare could stifle the competitive spirit.  And could long wait times  become a trend in the U.S one day?

Kings Fund chief economist Professor John Appleby said the health service was now operating in a different climate.

“In the past the two things that kept waiting down were targets and extra money. Managers got sacked for not meeting targets. And of course in the future there won’t be the same amount of extra money.”

The official waiting figures are only part of the picture. As the BBC recently found, some parts of the NHS in England have introduced new restrictions on treatment or put routine operations on hold for several months. None of this appears in the statistics as it occurs before the clock starts.

For me this is the frustration of healthcare reform, there is still not enough firm information out there to get our arms around to understand what direction we need to focus on.  What I do believe is that solid business ideals are going to make it shine!

I just hope there won’t be too many rules around it to prevent  it from doing what is intended to do.  Cut costs and deliver excellence in healthcare.  What’s your take?

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Accountable Care Organizations are a new concept intended to save Medicare dollars provided for in Obamacare.  They are also a radical new approach to healthcare that will fundamentally change the relationship between doctors and Medicare patients.  Sadly if these ACOs become reality more people will die from treatable conditions.

ACOs sound innocuous enough, they are “simply networks of hospitals and doctors that agree to manage all the medical needs of at least 5,000 Medicare patients for at least three years.”  Similar to traditional Medicare billing these doctors and hospitals will be paid in a fee for service system funded by Medicare.

The insidiousness of these Accountable Care Organizations arises in the fact that the federal government through the Medicare program would offer bonuses to providers in an ACO who are able to keep down costs while meeting specific standards for quality.

Stated differently, doctors and hospitals will be paid by the government to push patients toward less expensive treatments including President Barack Obama’s example of prescribing the pain pill instead of recommending a pacemaker.  This amounts to the government having a serious hand in what treatments people receive, a drastic departure from traditional American healthcare.

What’s worse is that since this is largely behind the scenes, people may not even know their doctor or hospital is part of an ACO and therefore may not question if their doctor is giving them all the options rather than only the cheap ones.  While it is true that these doctors and hospitals will need to meet certain standards of care, if public schools are any example of government standards anyone, who plans on getting sick or growing old should be very worried.

The Obama administration’s Health and Human Services department insists the creation of Accountable Care Organizations will incentivize doctors to keep their patients healthy.  However, many observers insist the more realistic outcome to expect is patients being denied treatments because of cost considerations as the doctor now has a vested interest in providing as few tests and prescribing the fewest amount of prescriptions and surgeries possible.

Pretty strong arguments against.What do you think? Now’s the time to speak up and let your opinion be heard while ACOs are still taking shape. We’ll be keeping a close eye on things so stay tuned for more ACO related blogs from MAS.

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