Coding: Your Top Coding Concerns Solved
Tips from our biweekly e-mail newsletter. This issue: Effective communication with your office’s coders.

Editor’s Note: It’s Time, at Last, for a Mandate
It’s an individual mandate that most Americans must purchase auto insurance if they want to drive. But, mandatory health insurance? Is that the right way to reform healthcare? Read further to hear executive editor Bob Keaveney’s cogitations on this issue.

Finance: Examining Payer Performance
Payers love judging your performance, but who’s watching theirs? Now in its third year, PayerView is the only data-based method of analyzing payer performance and ranking payers against one another — and we have it exclusively for you. Who’s been good this year? Who’s been naughty? You can check our list as often as you’d like.

Human Resources: Physician Employment Agreements
Build ’Em Right, Get ’Em Signed. Employment contracts are a must-have physician recruitment tool. But what should be in yours? What shouldn’t be? Here’s how to negotiate fairly with physician recruits.

IdeaLab: Walk-Ins This Way
Internist Rob Lamberts on his walk-in clinic experiment.

Physicians Practice Pearls: Manage to Make Time
Is your practice operating like Camp Run-a-Muck, where everyone is busy but little gets done? Maybe it’s time for some time management skills.

Start It Up: Staffing — Bring ’Em On
The latest installment of our series on starting a practice from scratch offers key pointers on hiring the staff you’ll need.

Technology: An EMR for free?
Have you heard about that “free” electronic medical records system that your local hospital, government agency, or EMR vendor is offering? Sounds good, right? But be careful. While there are ways to get EMR software for little or no cost, there are still expenses (and sometimes other strings) attached.

The Administrator’s Desk: Dealing with PTO Time
Here’s how to give your staff some scheduling flexibility, while keeping the office sufficiently staffed.

The Bigger Picture: Advantage Who?
The government’s experiment with private Medicare Advantage plans has been an expensive failure. Except, that is, for the companies raking in the dough.

The Tech Doctor: Do Physicians and Cell Phones Mix?
Dispensing corporate cell phones may be a given in your practice, but don’t fall into a money trap.