Power Your Practice

Thanks to the ARRA’s HITECH Act of 2009, US medical practices must make the switch to a paperless practice by way of electronic health records adoption. The deadline is 2015 if they don’t want to face penalties.

While it’s generally accepted that the switch to EHRs will lower costs and save time – a 2011 Healthcare Financial Management study estimate hospital benefits range between $37M to $59M during a five-year period in addition to Meaningful Use incentive payments –  there are still mounds of printed documents and charts that need to be incorporated within your new EHR system.

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As much as this topic doesn’t serve this kind of pop-cultural oversimplification, the fact is entrepreneurship is in style – a new ‘punk rock’ of sorts. The advantage of having so many people jump into the mix, however, is a constant hunger for innovation and a contrast between effective and ineffective entrepreneurs.

Being a doctor can’t go out of style by default. But when an occupation gets the opportunity to rest on its laurels for hundreds of years, it forgets to innovate. With all the entrepreneurs trying to improve the healthcare industry, especially in the tech space, doctors are increasingly enabled by innovation.

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Creating a compliance plan is probably the most robust way to protect yourself against the overpayment penalties brought about by the ACA’s expansion of the False Claims Act.

The ACA already requires a wide range of providers to establish compliance and ethics programs if they want to continue in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) “Seven Fundamental Elements of an Effective Compliance Program” is an incredible place to start.

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A joint Washington Post-Kaiser Health News article last year focused on the greater scrutiny aging doctors face in the workplace, an emotionally charged issue that’s come to the forefront of the healthcare world in recent years.

According to the American Medical Association, approximately 42 percent of US physicians are older than 55, with 21 percent surpassing the country’s retirement age.

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