MGMA 2012 Financial Management and Payer Contracting (FMPC) Conference

Concurrent sessions

Determine the appropriate sessions to attend based on your specific areas of interest.

View the concurrent sessions by selecting each content category tab below.

Finance and Accounting Operations
Payer Contracting
Evolving Healthcare
Physician Compensation
Benchmarking Analysis and Applications
Government Affairs




Finance and Accounting Operations concurrent sessions

Leading Edge: The Elements of Financial Management and
the Revenue Cycle in the Medical Practice

Foundational
Sunday, Feb. 26, 2:00-5:00 pm

Sara M. Larch, FACMPE, principal, Business of Medicine, Christiansted, V.I., and Daniel D. Mefford, MBA, FACMPE, CPA, consultant, Practice Resource Management Group Inc., Columbus, Ohio

Are you new to medical practice management? Do you want to strengthen your knowledge of key revenue cycle processes and financial management issues in medical practice management? If you answered “yes” to either, this session is for you. This fast-paced session will outline the essentials of both financial and revenue cycle management in the medical practice. Find out how to take hold of the numbers, ask the right questions and explain those numbers to your physicians. Leave this session with a grasp of the essential revenue cycle functions, including billing and collections.

This session will provide you with the knowledge to:

  • Identify key accounting and financial management concepts, including balance sheet, income statement and applicable financial management analytical tools
  • Define essential processes, strategies and priorities that impact your revenue cycle

Leading Edge: Interactive Problem Solving in Healthcare Financial Management

Operational
Sunday, Feb. 26, 2:00-5:00 pm

Sarah Holt, PhD, FACMPE, practice administrator, Cape Girardeau Surgical Clinic Inc., Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Today’s medical practice administrators face many new challenges, and each individual brings a different set of experiences to the table. Participating in interactive problem solving and networking can provide invaluable opportunities to explore solutions while learning from and sharing with others. This facilitator-led interactive session creates discussion around a set of financial management, payer contracting and evolving healthcare scenarios that represent many of the timely, real-world issues that impact healthcare organizations’ financial health and stability. This “problem → discussion → solution” format fosters effective problem solving through focused discussion and sharing of expertise as participants explore solutions to the problems they face.

This session will provide you with the knowledge to:

  • Explore current and emerging financial and payer contracting issues that impact healthcare financial management
  • Share individual expertise and exchange ideas while learning from others
  • Generate solutions in a face-to-face format

102: Telling the Story: How to Measure and Analyze the Revenue Cycle

Operational
Monday, Feb. 27, 9:45-11:00 am

Sara M. Larch, FACMPE, principal, Business of Medicine, Christiansted, V.I.

Medical group leaders are responsible for communicating results to their group. Knowing how to analyze your revenue cycle performance and report it to your physicians is a key success factor. Just placing data on a page doesn’t make it a communication; you must make sure your reports are “telling the story.”

This session will provide you with the knowledge to:

  • Evaluate and improve revenue cycle management reports
  • Identify the necessary month-end and ad hoc reports
  • Explain what key revenue cycle factors can skew your results compared to industry benchmarks

202: Is it Time to Change Your Revenue Cycle Model: Centralize, Decentralize, Outsource?

Operational
Monday, Feb. 27, 11:15 am-12:30 pm

Sara M. Larch, FACMPE, principal, Business of Medicine, Christiansted, V.I.

If your current revenue cycle performance is not in line with those of best-practice medical groups, you want to consider other models that may improve key revenue cycle processes. The ongoing debate about whether to centralize, decentralize or outsource billing has become an opportunity to build a hybrid model that works for your medical group.

This session will provide you with the knowledge to:

  • Define decentralized, centralized and outsourced models
  • Explain why a hybrid model could improve performance
  • Design a transition plan to another model

302: CSI: Reporting – Unlocking the Secrets Behind Your Data

Operational
Monday, Feb. 27, 1:30-2:45 pm

Nancy Wilkes, CPC, vice president, practice management technology, UCI Medical Affiliates, Inc., Columbia, S.C.

Find the places where money might be hiding from you – money that could be recovered with the right tools. Are your reports providing the in-depth knowledge of your accounts receivable, or could you be missing valuable information? Do you know how your top 20 codes compare across all of your payers?

This session will provide you with the knowledge to:

  • Maximize recoveries by identifying areas of hidden data
  • Improve productivity and efficiency by identifying issues caused by payers, employees and/or software
  • Import reports to Microsoft Excel to enable greater data flexibility

402: CSI: Reporting Lab

Operational
Monday, Feb. 27. 3:30-4:45 pm

Nancy Wilkes, CPC, vice president, practice management technology, UCI Medical Affiliates, Inc., Columbia, S.C.

If your software applications provide you with several reports that you would like to combine into one, or if you need the ability to summarize or sort the data differently but do not have business intelligence software to achieve this, this is the session for you. Find out how to merge spreadsheets, merge and split column data using delimiters, and apply and change formula values to calculated values. Participants will learn how to import text files of reports into Microsoft Excel to allow for data manipulation and merging of multiple spreadsheets through the use of inexpensive Microsoft Excel add-ins.

Prior to attending the session, participants may want to download a free 15-day trial of DigDB at http://digdb.com/ download/ and a free 90-day trial of ASAP Utilities at http:// asap-utilities.com/download-asap-utilities.php.

This session will provide you with the knowledge to:

  • Export reports to text files and import them into Microsoft Excel
  • Review and demonstrate the main features of DigDB and ASAP Utilities by merging and manipulating multiple spreadsheets
  • Summarize detail data and copy it into another spreadsheet to allow manipulation of the summarized data

502: Health Systems and Independent Clinics: Are We Right for Each Other?

Strategic
Tuesday, Feb. 28. 8:15-9:30 am

Vince Manoogian, CMPE, senior director, Southwind, A Division of The Advisory Board Company, St. Louis

Many independent medical groups are considering new relationships with hospitals and health systems to meet the challenges of the changing healthcare landscape. What is driving this latest wave of acquisitions and mergers? How does an entity know when the time is right to merge, and with whom? This session will explore the current and developing state of mergers between independent groups and health systems. Learn to identify, through real-life examples, the opportunities and pitfalls for aligning your organization with another. The stakes are high and the risks are great, so getting it right is critical.

This session will provide you with the knowledge to:

  • Identify independent groups’ and health systems’ expectations when merging
  • Determine whether a potential merger represents a good deal for your organization
  • Examine mergers’ impact on healthcare quality, patient safety and cost effectiveness

602: Physician Practice Valuation – Fundamentals to Essentials

Operational
Tuesday, Feb. 28, 9:45-11:00 am

Reed Tinsley, CPA, CVA, CFP, CHBC, consultant/owner, Reed Tinsley, CPA, Cypress, Texas

More and more physicians are looking to sell their medical practices to hospitals. So what is a fair price for their practice? This how-to session will provide seminar participants with a solid foundation in the analysis and valuation of medical practices. Learn about the methods used to value a medical practice, regulatory issues to consider in a valuation and the key factors to consider when valuing any medical practice. Find out about the Derby case and how it applies to valuation.

This session will provide you with the knowledge to:

  • Define the impact of regulatory laws on valuation
  • Review the nuances of a physician practice valuation
  • Examine the income, asset and market valuation methodologies

604: Nearly Half of Medical Practices Encounter Employee Theft:
Where Does Your Practice Fall?

Operational
Tuesday, Feb. 28, 9:45-11:00 am

Stephen A. Pedneault, CPA/CFF, CFE, principal, Forensic Accounting Services, LLC, Glastonbury, Conn.

A difficult economic climate, heightened unemployment, reductions in reimbursement levels, decreases in fee realizations, declines in patient and procedure volumes, and increased competition are among the significant financial factors impacting today’s medical practices. Given the uncertainty surrounding your practice’s future revenues and cash flows, the last thing any practice should worry about is whether someone is stealing. This session will discuss the policies and procedures every practice should implement to minimize the risk of employee theft and embezzlement. Discussions will include recent cases, schemes perpetrated and the means by which each could have been prevented or detected.

This session will provide you with the knowledge to:

  • Explain why employee theft and embezzlement is a threat to every medical practice
  • Identify common areas of opportunity along with typical schemes
  • Develop transparency and accountability in accounting, billing and collection processes to close the accountability gaps

702: Ancillary Revenue: Past, Present and Future

Operational
Tuesday, Feb. 28, 11:15-12:30 pm

Reed Tinsley, CPA, CVA, CFP, CHBC, consultant/owner, Reed Tinsley, CPA, Cypress, Texas

Implementing new service lines and adding ancillary services are among practices’ viable options for enhancing revenue and increasing profit. This session will review service options for primary care, single-specialty, multispecialty and academic groups. We will also explore new practice-revenue opportunities under current guidelines, as well as changing reimbursement options under healthcare reform. Fee for service, gain sharing and other risk-reimbursement methodologies, along with capitation models, will be viable future options to incentivize quality rather than quantity. Interpret your ancillary service opportunities under the changing rules associated with patient-centered medical homes, accountable care organizations and other healthcare reform models.

This session will provide you with the knowledge to:

  • Identify potential ancillary service options for your practice
  • Consider how ancillary reimbursement methodologies may change under healthcare reform
  • Examine how to lead your practice to receive payment for quality, not quantity, incentives