Business certainly implies an upper hand for the owner of the business. It is of vital importance to understand the direction in which a business is headed toward from a financial perspective. This entails the knowledge and understanding of profit and loss, statement of sources and uses of cash. It is also pertinent to understand the meaning of developing capital and operating budgets, a tool which helps in identifying problems before they become too big to handle.
Otolaryngology or ENT physicians are well trained in medical and surgical procedures. They focus on the problems and disorders of ear, nose and throat. An ENT physician must see to it that he/she is doing all that they can to offer the best patient care. ENT practices typically have more scope, more promotional options and more ways to generate revenue compared to most other medicine specialties. Ranging from endoscopic sinus surgery to treatment of sleep disorders, from allergy cure programs to dizziness centers and from clinical audiology to cash services that comprise hearing aids and elective facial cosmetic procedures, ENT is one of the few specialties that offer such a huge range of value to patients and has a wide potential of generating revenue.
Following are some of the ways that ENT practices could adopt to ensure higher revenue generation -
- Endorsing your practice with referring physicians must be followed. For example, if an individual was referred to you by a primary physician, make sure to send a letter to thank him for the referral. Sending him mailers with interesting articles highlighting key passages in order to personalize it will only add to your credit.
- Marketing and advertising initiatives can be looked at once your practice is well settled with its internal operations. An occasional campaign including talks about allergies, tonsillitis or sinus is one thing. Promoting your practice by having informational/educational talks about various ENT problems associated with age etc could be conducted at a church, hospital or a community center.
Billing Issues:
Otolaryngology faces two extremely common billing issues. One is the incorrect use of the modifier 50 resulting in confusion regarding reimbursements at the time of billing bilateral procedures. The second one is the claim denials for CPT code 30520 ie Septoplasty. These denials require appeals along with additional medical documentation and a careless attitude or a mistake in handling the claims can lead to losses in revenue for the respective practices.
Medical billing for a practice is of extreme importance since it can help you diagnose the health of your practice. Various reports can show you the graph of your practice based on important revenue cycle metrics, indicating whether claims are being paid on time and how well you are being paid by the insurance carriers for key procedures.