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Do you know what time it is? It’s turkey time, people! (Apologies to the vegetarians out there). But yes, Thanksgiving is upon us once again. As per tradition, this is the time of year when we consider the things for which we are most thankful (and spend a whole day eating ourselves into food comas and then the brave or mad among us choose to go out the next day for an annual shopping event with its own casualty rate). And this Thanksgiving there are certainly a lot of things to be thankful for—we aren’t locked up in our houses like we were last year, COVID vaccines are widely available, new episodes of Dexter are back on Showtime, and it looks like we will be able to openly travel this holiday season (and on that note, if you do travel, please be kind to airline personnel).

Poor management of a practice’s collections can have a number of negative effects, including reduced or delayed revenue as well as owed balances spending too much time in Accounts Receivable. By implementing some simple training methods and best practices, however, your practice can improve collections management.

The right Practice Management (PM) solution is a useful asset to any specialty practice, reducing administrative burdens, optimizing financial performance and enhancing patient care. The wrong solution, however, can be quite the opposite and lead to inefficiencies, process bottlenecks, redundant data entry, lost revenue and limitations to use. This is why, right from the start, it is crucial to do your research and properly vet all potential PM providers to be certain you select a solution that is best suited to the needs of your specialty practice.

We did it! We survived 2020! Hands down, 2020 was the toughest year (so far) of the twenty-first century. But we got through it. As we move into 2021, this is the time when many of us are making New Year’s resolutions. To help our readers commit to new initiatives for practice success in the coming year, this blog will suggest a number of useful New Year’s Resolutions for Specialty Practices.

Luckily, 2020 is coming to an end… and many of us are probably ready to happily put it behind us. But what’s in store for us in the year to come? After all the things 2020 has put us through, many of us can’t help but look at 2021 with a mixture of skeptical anxiety and hopefulness. Because the truth is that we have no idea whether things are going to get better or worse… but we hope better. To help our readers understand what they should look forward to in the new year, here is a list of things specialty practices should expect in 2021.

No matter whether your practice is small or large, creating a Quality Improvement Team can provide the ability to remain viable in today’s rapidly changing healthcare landscape. Practices now face penalties up to 9 percent for 2020 and 2021 (an increase of 5 percent from when MIPS started) for poorly demonstrated performance. These penalties will only increase as the years go on, reaching 11 percent by the end of 2023. However, for practices that are able to properly demonstrate high quality and value, bonus potential continues to rise as well. In addition to MIPS, many insurance companies offer incentive programs with significant bonuses based on demonstration of high quality and value in a practice.

Welcome to the second half of our two-part blog series on Boling Vision Center (BVC), and how their practice not only survived but thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Part 1, we focused on how they created a safe and enjoyable patient experience by developing new processes and services in addition to modifying old ones. In this blog, we will examine how they were able to cost-effectively achieve record numbers by executing an aggressive social media and community outreach initiative during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The COVID-19 outbreak caught many in the healthcare community off guard. In very short order, many practices found themselves scrambling to adjust to new protocols, processes and regulations. Some succeeded more than others, of course. At Nextech, we closely monitored the impact of the pandemic on our practices to gain as much insight as possible and to learn how to meet the changing needs of our users. For months, we have been conducting interviews, insight surveys and case studies with our clients to gain an understanding of which tactics are working, as well as which ones are not and we are doing our best to share these findings with our readers.