Coding Questions?
Questions and answers about coding are taken from the Ask an Expert section of our Web site, www.PhysiciansPractice.com.

Coming to Terms With Payers
Competition among insurers for employer customers - and physician panels for these customers - forces rates toward an industry average of compensation. This can be used as a starting point to detect inordinately low proposals and help reconcile the negotiating parties' positions.

Confidants Needed
Mentoring physicians new to your practice may seem time-consuming, but it need not be a difficult burden.

Need a Satellite Office?
Opening a new satellite is one of the bigger financial risks your practice is likely to take. Some have gone bankrupt trying. Those who have done it successfully are universal in their advice: Never take such a huge gamble strictly on a hunch or without a detailed strategy.

Phone Reports
Although many physician practices are using computers to share information with hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies, and other doctors, the telephone is still the main tool they use to communicate with patients.

Shared Rewards
When you hear the phrase "return on investment," you probably think of potential revenue from a piece of diagnostic equipment or increased productivity that comes from turning a paper-based process electronic. But in a medical practice, often the largest single investment is the staff.

Taking Control
Longview Surgical Group has only eight physicians, but it's a giant when it comes to payer contracting: The practice made retroactive denials an anathema in Washington State.

The Parent Trap
If you had a patient who tested positive for HIV, you'd tell him, right? What if the patient was 17, and it was his mother who had passed the AIDS-causing virus to her son and his siblings in utero? She had neglected to tell any of her children about their condition - and wanted you to keep the secret.

They Owe You One
With all the hullabaloo in the press about physicians' fees being so high, and a general sense that fee schedules don't matter anymore since payers never reimburse the full amount, physicians too often neglect to update their fee schedules. Don't let that happen.

Three Steps to Fewer Denials
If claims management sometimes feels like a pingpong match, it's no wonder. Payers bounce back an average of 10 percent to 15 percent of all submitted claims as denials, according to Elizabeth Woodcock, FACMPE, director of knowledge management for Physicians Practice. That figure can ricochet to 25 percent or so for certain specialties.

We Will Survive
Today's stock market may remind you of your days as a resident: a seemingly endless period of high stress and sleepless nights. Now, as you look back, you know that was simply a tough period that you needed to get through to reach your professional goals.