Quickinars™

Many years ago, analytics was the purview of a selected few nerds. Today, it is fast becoming a required skill for healthcare professionals, from middle managers to administrators and CEOs.  Even the smallest of practices can't escape the need to become more in tune with business intelligence.  In this short webinar, Frank Cohen, data analyst and statistician, will present his approach to conducting a comprehensive practice analysis, discussing its three major components, presenting the work product and showing how to apply the results to help improve profitability, compliance and quality of care.
By virtue of the sample data set, this first in a series of presentations focuses on orthopaedic practices in the solo to 10-physician range.

If you would care to examine the work products of this sample analysis, they have been packasged into a ZIP file for download - click here. 

Every year, RBRVS goes through a major change and as such, affects the Physician Fee Schedule database, which, in turn impacts Medicare payments. Every time this change occurs, the medical practice has to try to figure out just how it will impact their business model and without specific tools, it is about impossible to do. In this short Quickinar, Frank Cohen will go over the 2012 RBRVS change analysis he conducted, comparing the 2011 RBRVS to the 2012 release, showing the attendee how to use the results of his study to create a Medicare financial impact for their own practice. In addition, time permitting, he will demonstrate a small utility he has written that conducts this analysis for the practice in just moments 

As payers and the feds continue to raise the bar on medical practices with respect to business analytics, we need to step into line very quickly. RACs, ZPICs, MICs and MACs, as well as private payers, are using more and more sophisticated methods in order to profile your practice for an audit or review. In addition, as more physicians look to out-of-network as a more profitable payment model, having a defensible fee schedule becomes a critical component of your business.

In this short Quickinar (30 minutes or less), Frank Cohen, analyst, statistician and developer of the Total Practice Analyzer, will conduct a brief demonstration of the program, showing you how quickly and easily you can conduct a procedure code utilization analysis, modifier analysis and develop a defensible fee schedule. 

While understanding E/M guidelines is critical for accurate and appropriate coding, understanding how to benchmark E/M utilization is the key to understanding, estimating and mitigating compliance risk. This includes financial impact analyses and understanding how to interpret variances from national and local comparative databases. In this short, free Quickinar™ on E/M utilization, Frank Cohen, data analyst and statistician, will introduce you to the idea of utilization analysis and benchmarking E/M code utilization. Specifically, you will learn about three major analytical components; intra category, which looks at the utilization of each code within its own category, inter-category, which looks at the relationship between different coding categories and global analysis, which looks at the use of each category as a percent of all E/M codes reported. 

The fee schedule is the medical practice’s most important, yet least analyzed financial tool. Learn the benchmarks, metrics and resources needed to analyze and fine-tune your practice’s fee schedule code by code. In this short, free Quickinar™ Frank Cohen, data analyst and statistician, will show you how to identify over and under-priced services and how to benchmark your charges against your peers. Methodologies will include RBRVS, global charge models and benchmarking against national and state charges. When complete, attendees will have acquired the skill set necessary to immediately begin their own in-depth fee schedule analysis. 

Knowing how to code and understanding the impact of the codes and modifiers reported are two seemingly distinct yet related areas of managing the revenue cycle. Selecting correct codes in relation to a patient encounter is critical to getting paid. Analyzing the utilization pattern of those codes is the best way to rapidly identify coding anomalies and potential compliance risks on a global scale. The same is true for modifiers. Between the CERT study and the OIG work plan, several procedure codes and modifiers have been identified as high risk. Measuring overall utilization of these against peer benchmarks is the best way to assess your risk of an audit and discover areas for improving revenue and quality of care.

In this short and free Quickinar™, Frank Cohen, analyst and statistician, will show you how to develop utilization databases for both procedures and modifiers, how to interpret the results of a comparative analyses and how to use the results to reduce risk and improve profitability and quality of care. When finished, attendees will have the skill set necessary to perform and interpret their own code and modifier utilization analysis. 

Whether we like it or not, RBRVS has become a standard in the healthcare industry for benchmarking, financial analysis, fee scheduling, physician productivity and compensation and other medical practice management and analytical applications. You don't have to be an expert to take advantage of the benefits or mitigate the risks involved in projects involving RBRVS. Payers use it for fee scheduling, RACs use it to identify practices for audit and practices use it to get a handle on costs and provider performance. If you don't understand what RBRVS is or how it is used, now is the time to learn.

In this Quickinar™, Frank Cohen, data analyst, statistician and RBRVS expert will introduce you to the basics of RBRVS, show you how the RVU components are developed and maintained and how the RBRVS can benefit you, your physicians and your practice. This Quickinar™ will include a link to a file that contains samples, examples and a great template to help you calculate RVUs for every procedure you report.