Adding Ancillaries: Bucking the Practice
Many resourceful physicians have turned to adding ancillary services as a way of boosting income. But be careful: While this strategy can and often does work, it comes with risk — to your wallet and your preferred practice style. Keep your eyes open.

Career: To Partner, or Not?
That is the question. The answer is different for each physician. Partnership means more money but more headaches — and risk. Here’s how to decide on a path that’s right for you.

Coding: Your Top Coding Concerns Solved
Tips from our biweekly e-mail newsletter. This issue: Clean house in your billing office; Details matter in review of systems.

Editor’s Note: A Tale of Two Solutions?
Is the medical malpractice insurance crisis over? Has the long nightmare of frivolous jury awards, over-the-top settlements, skyrocketing premiums, and fleeing physicians finally come to an end? Hear what Physicians Practice’s executive editor has to say.

Finance: Beyond Reimbursement
You know that some payers pay better than others, but do you know how to increase your practice’s proportion of patients with better-paying insurers? Here are our strategies for improving your payer mix.

Human Resources: Saying Goodbye the Right Way
You’ve tried coaching. You’ve tried encouragement. You’ve tried punishment. This employee simply won’t improve, and has to go. How do you pull the trigger?

IdeaLab: ‘How I got Over My EMR Excuses’
Steve Ryan, MD, rebuts the most common “reasons” many physicians give for sticking with paper.

Management: Controlling Your Inventory
Cleaning out your supply closet may not be high on your list of favorite activities, but there’s money on those shelves — your money. Stop wasting it and get organized. We’ll help you get started.

Physician Fee Schedule Survey — 2007
We hear you. Unfortunately, physician reimbursement continues to decline, according to the results of our exclusive 2007 Fee Schedule Survey. That’s the bad news. Now here’s the good news: Along with all the hard data, we arm you with the tools you need to fight back.

Physicians Practice Pearls: You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks
Don’t let employees’ poor computer skills (or your own) stop you from adopting needed technology.

Technology: Don’t Be Denied
Tired of having your claims rejected by payers who seem to be looking for any reason under the sun not to pay you? Try these “claims scrubbing” tools to reduce, and appeal, those denials.

The Administrator’s Desk: Learning From the Best
What advice do the best veteran practice administrators around have to share? We thought someone should ask them. So we did.

The Bigger Picture: Fixing Medicaid
The government has some ideas about what’s wrong with Medicaid, and how to fix it. Too bad their ideas don’t have much to do with paying doctors better.

The Tech Doctor: New Technologies in the Workplace — Blessing or Curse?
Instant messaging and other ubiquitous consumer technologies can be useful in your practice. But they also pose security threats you may never have thought of.