Physicians Practice Pearls®

Physicians typically feel they have little control over work-life balance, but they have the power to improve their emotional resilience. Here's how.

Creating access to quality patient care at a reasonable cost requires a systematic approach that involves both physicians and staff members.

Consultant Judy Capko provides nine ways to effectively meet your practice's scheduling demands.

Patient satisfaction is doubly important now that it is a payment metric. Make sure you are doing everything possible to get the top scores you deserve.

Before deciding to provide and bill for chronic care management, a practice should make sure it has the necessary staff and support structures first.

Anonymous, electronic remarks can be hurtful to your pride and medical practice. Here are four ways to handle potentially detrimental online reviews.

Patient education programs can help physicians empower their patients to be a partner in their own care, and meet quality metric targets.

Patients come to a direct-pay practice for improved access to physicians. In order to deliver on that promise, a physician must have the right tools.

No matter how you choose to communicate - view every single message you deliver as a piece of formal correspondence that will live on in perpetuity.

Value-based reimbursement programs have arrived. Physicians can react with frustration or adjust their practices to meet the new metrics for payment.

Collecting from patients is vital to a practice's bottom line. But often, it is an inconsistent process, done poorly. Here's what you can do about it.

Do you spend more time sorting out staffing issues than you do delivering patient care? If so, you might want to consider a different management style.

Medicare's value-based modifier is a new fee schedule adjustment that will reward or penalize physicians for quality of care in 2015.

Taking time to build quality interactions with your patients can actually save you time, and help you become a more effective physician.

Group visits are an opportunity for busy practices to solve patient-demand problems, and to make sure patients get the care they need.

After converting to a direct-pay practice two years ago, this physician has learned a thing or two and is glad he made the change.

Busy physicians are frequently overwhelmed with competing obligations, both at home and work. You'll be happier if you develop a strategy for saying no.

Over the summer CMS added four new modifiers that will require a much greater degree of specification when coding surgical procedures.

It is not the presence of conflict that is critical; it is the ability to resolve it in a productive and healthy manner that matters most.

There is no time like the present to review your patient payment strategy. Here are 11 questions every practice should consider.

Rather than disparage walk-in clinics, make an effort to reach out and form a collaborative arrangement. Both your practice and patients could benefit.

Our experts at Physicians Practice Pearls have written on a wide variety of practice-management topics, but these eight columns stood out as the gems.

People are often oblivious to their irritating habits. Here are strategies for dealing with three types of irksome behavior.

We know patients feel frustration with their physicians on some level. But, surprisingly, it's not always about the long wait.

Let's face it, medicine is a business. If your new physician isn't productive, your practice will suffer. Here are some strategies to speed things up.

The promise of technology is to reduce work flow and to reap smoother operations. But are you using technology in your practice to its full advantage?

If you believe your practice is too small to warrant the attention of Recovery Audit Contractors, think again. Here are ways to prepare for scrutiny.