In an effort to help you maximize all your services, Dr. Daniel Dahan has identified 7 departmental areas in your practice, which need to be addressed. Each of these areas is being dealt with sequentially in The American Chiropractor. By following the suggestions given, your office will not only maximize its potential, but also delineate areas of weakness that need your attention.
2. Treatment Protocol
Indeed, one of the most important aspects of a successful office is its treatment protocol (TP). Following are the advantages of having written treatment protocols:
1. Give your patient the best care available: Comprehensive note keeping will give each doctor a better understanding and, hence, the ability to give better treatment. Rather than relying on memory, the doctor has thorough detailed notes and a plan of the proposed and recommended treatment.
2. By Organizing, you will maximize your patient flow: Too often, staff has no proper understanding of the doctor’s treatment or its necessity. Thus, in any typical office, the staff and patients get frustrated which, obviously, results in poor management and poor retention.
3. Limit your liability: When TP is well and carefully established, a doctor can easily explain or even defend his or her position. Detailed notes will show a carefully laid out treatment plan supported by objective treatment and medical necessity.
4. Enhance your billing/coding: By properly establishing TP, a good office manager/biller can easily identify possible errors and rectify them before sending out any forms. Even without having a medical background, a biller can easily determine proper coding by going over a well-structured TP.
5. Increase reimbursement: It goes without saying that insurance companies pay claims based on documentation provided by the doctor. Using the proper TP is of utmost necessity given today’s sophisticated and automated billing systems, which allow for payers to thoroughly analyze any claim.
6. Decrease letter of medical necessity: As long as the doctor continues to treat patients day in and day out without paying attention to the complete TP, payers and their administrators will, understandably, demand letters of medical necessity explaining why such-and-such patient did not have a proper protocol as the regular established standard of medical/chiropractic care.
What to do to establish proper treatment protocol:
1. Take a seminar.
2. Review all forms used by your office and their usage.
3. Train staff on the reasons for establishing TP’S.
4. Regularly review all established TP’S and their procedures.
Dr. Daniel H. Dahan is the founder and CEO of Practice Perfect, one of the nation’s largest management and consulting firms for multidisciplinary centers. For more information, call 866 67-DAHAN, (866) 673-2426 (Toll Free #), email [email protected] or visit www.dahan.com.