Many factors influence how you practice medicine. Competition from urgent care centers, so-called minute clinics and the Internet have all, no doubt, affected the way you manage your practice. But one thing has not changed: your need to satisfy your customer, the patient. read more »

The business of a medical practice involves a complex set of procedures and carefully coordinated acts that allow a patient to be treated, referred and billed. Yet new employees are expected to get up to speed in a short time, and established staff members may choose to cut corners over time. That’s why a detailed, updated and enforced office procedural manual is a great tool to help ensure consistency in how the practice goes about its business. read more »

The greatest asset of any physician practice is its employees — the good ones, that is. Just about every practice manager has had to deal with a problematic staff member at one time or another. Problems can range from an employee not performing his or her job properly to someone stealing cash, medical supplies or equipment from the practice. The biggest mistake many practice managers make is either taking far too long to deal with problem employees or not dealing with them at all. read more »

Andrew McDonald, FACHE has been promoted to director in the healthcare consulting department at LBMC. McDonald has more than 25 years of experience working as either full-time administrator or consultant to a broad range of healthcare organizations. read more »

April, 2011 – Lattimore Black Morgan & Cain, PC (LBMC), one of the Southeast’s largest accounting and business consulting firms, has added Paul Damron, CPA in its Brentwood (Nashville) office.

Paul Damron, a Certified Public Accountant, has joined the healthcare team of the accounting firm in a senior consultant position. He has experience working with both physician groups and hospitals and previously worked as a financial analyst at HealthSpring. He earned a bachelor's degree at Samford University and his MBA from Vanderbilt. read more »

April, 2011 – Lattimore Black Morgan & Cain, PC (LBMC), one of the Southeast’s largest accounting and business consulting firms, has added Shatita Daniels, CPC in its Brentwood (Nashville) office. read more »

Everywhere you turn these days, there seems to be advertising for a “new” kind of computing -- in the “cloud.”

But the truth is, depending on the vendor, that cloud computing may just be a fresh name for a well-established technology that has been deployed in medical offices and other businesses for years. Think on-line banking, for example. What is relatively new, though, are the extensive opportunities for medical practices to use the cloud to handle electronic medical records. read more »

Medical practices may find it a bit easier to qualify for federal subsidies for installing electronic health records systems now that the final rules have been published. But time is shorter now for those who waited for the rule to be finalized before starting to plan for an installation.

During the six month comment period, the federal government received lots of feedback indicating it would be difficult to meet the proposed rules. The response was to relax the requirements, as explained later in this article.  read more »

Healthcare reform has resulted in many changes to health benefit plans and their sponsors.  Many changes have already occurred while other changes are scheduled to be effective in later years.  A change that will take place the first day of 2011 will have a significant effect on FSA, HSA and HRA participants. read more »