That Time of Year

It is that time of year when practices are looking back.  Looking back on the year and asking the tough questions.  It’s been a tough one from the economic side of the industry. 

I have seen an increase in self pay volumes across the board driven by the economy.  This means more and more dollars are going into the bad debt category.  These self pay patients are harder to collect from and are forcing billers to be better at their tasks.  For example, billers routinely use “scrubbers” now to clean any self pay patient accounts and see if these patients are signed up for the state Medicaid programs.

Overall many practices are working harder to maintain the status quo.   As I noted in the CAP’s Transformation Plenary, many practices are seeing an increase in anatomic volume without the corresponding increase in revenue. 

Revenue has barely stabilized this year and only a slight increase in the Medicare fee schedule has prevented groups from taking substantial losses.

The best practices are proactive.  They are the practices that allow us to re-negotiate or terminate their punitive manage care contracts.  2010 has been the year to educate hospital administrators of the pathology and laboratory market and I can only see an increase in this type of education for 2011. 

The biggest success story of the year has been a hospital that took their pathology billing out of their MSO and outsourced the work.  This allowed the hospital to pay the salaried pathologists better and given the hospital administration a clear look into the pathology economic market.