Dr. Brian Capra, Chiropractor and Expert in Office Automation and Billing Software - Part II

Dr. Brian Capra, a graduate of Life University, has been a practicing chiropractor and office automation expert. He routinely visits chiropractic offices around the nation while receiving raving feedback from his clients. In his blog on Chiropractic Office Billing Software Profitability, Dr. Brian offers practical solutions for building a profitable and completely paperless office. In the second part of his interview, Dr. Brian gives advice to chiropractors who are at the start of their professional career.

 

• How did your own viewpoints evolve from the time you started Billing Precision?

   

  Dr. Brian : My viewpoints evolved in step with the growing scope of our service. As the number and size of the practices we support grew, I realized that my initial conjecture about the importance of integrated office workflow is paramount to success. For instance, besides a solid billing process, perfect SOAP notes are critical for better care, for lower audit risk, and for full reimbursement.

  Two other critical points are practice owner's business focus and teamwork. An unfocused practice owner will always confuse profit, revenue, and costs. And insurance companies will always exploit the lack of teamwork between billing and front office personnel.

  Today I realize that focus and teamwork can be turned around from being points of vulnerability to the strongest weapon for improving practice profitability and making the insurance companies pay everything they owe you. You can lock them down. You can research your options, fight back, and help others to fight back too.

• When talking to practice owners who invite you to their office, what are the comments that stick out most in your mind?

   

  Dr. Brian: In many ways, working with practice owners reminds me of working with the patient: a practice is a very complex system, where the flow of information must be uninhibited in order to have the practice growing at a healthy pace. Patients must make progress and vital functions of the office too must perform optimally to grow and to avoid risks.

  Patients are notorious for saying "well, I just get these headaches about once a day." When they realize that a headache is a problem with blood to the brain and most chiropractic do not have headaches, they see a whole new reality they never knew is possible. When patients begin to understand the principles of how things happen, they understand that chiropractic is not just a treatment for headaches. They begin to appreciate their true potential.

  A systemic "subluxation" may not be immediately observable to a naked and untrained eye, yet it may cause major setbacks for the practice owner. Just like patients who lack education about their own body and their nervous system, practice owners are often ignorant about the reasons for their underpayment or for the lack of practice growth. Many are complacent, they think where they are is as good as it gets.

  Doctors and practice managers are no different with realizing the potential for the health and wellness of their own office. Their own resistance to change and education, not the payers or the lack of adequate technology, is their biggest enemy. Few practice owners are open immediately to the changes in attitude and self-discipline required for measurable improvement in collections and reduction of audit exposure. Some seem stuck on "I don't need this," "we have it under control," "we tried it and it did not work," "we can do it better" or "if it is so great how come nobody else is doing it?" Others have tasted previously awful experiences with outsourcing to billing services that neglected denials and underpayments and collected commission fees only on claims that were paid anyway.

• What would you advise to the chiropractor who is about to start a new practice?

   

  Dr. Brian: Keep the principles in mind. An office is in a lot of ways a living thing. Just as it is impossible to for the liver to do the job of the kidneys it is impossible for the chiropractor to do the job of the biller of front desk. Luckily, God made a centralized system to control and coordinate the intercommunication and function of every cell in the body. Obviously the system is the CNS and all organs and systems are accountable to it. A new doctor should see that he/she should leverage a technology and use it as the CNS of his/her practice. In that way they can act at times like the brain, sending messages and giving orders to the rest of the body through the technology, and at other times allow that system to sustain the life of the practice. The doctor can then pick and choose where his/her time is most effectively spent: IE, Marketer, Adjuster, or Manager.

  Steps to success:

  1. Get a system of practice
  2. Get a technology that will help measure that system and one that will help manage it
  3. Run the system
  4. Find inefficiencies
  5. Build in automation, leveraging technology and other people’s time, to prevent the inefficiency from reoccurring
  6. Measure the changes and adjust accordingly

     Yuval Lirov, PhD, author of "Practicing Profitability - Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinic and Chiropractic Office: Scheduling, SOAP Notes, Care Plans, Coding, Billing, Collections, and Audit Risk" (Affinity Billing) and "Mission Critical Systems Management" (Prentice Hall), inventor of patents in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Security, and CEO of Vericle.net - Distributed Billing and Practice Management Technologies. Yuval invites you to register to the next webinar on audit risk at BillingPrecision.com.