Three Practice Management Trends for 2012

Three Practice Management Trends for 2012 

For the third year, the MGMA has published the State of Medical Practice in MGMA Connexion. It’s an overview of issues and industry perspectives that will shape medical practice this year. The Association collected information from healthcare professionals about the ways in which EHRs increase revenue, as well as what affects your compensation and practice collections, among others.

Here are three of the 12 practice management trends:

1. Collections vs. compensation: Setting matters
Your practice’s ownership may directly affect your physicians’ pay. Collections for professional charges (i.e., patient visits, procedures) are higher in physician-owned practices than in hospital owned practices, according to the MGMA Physician Compensation and Production Survey: 2011 Report Based on 2010 Data. Since physician compensation in a physician-owned practice is the total revenue amount after all expenses are paid, physicians’ salaries are directly related to productivity and efficiency, which may not be the case in a hospital-owned setting.

2. Level of administrative complexity, responsibility reflected in compensation
The responsibilities of practice management professionals vary based on experience, location, size of organization and specialty, even among professionals with the same title. The MGMA Management Compensation Survey: 2011 Report Based on 2010 Data outlines compensation for administrative positions and shows variation by administrative complexity, specialty and size of organization, among other factors. For example, the data show that leaders with a CEO title who managed practices with more than 25 full-time equivalent (FTE) physicians saw their median compensation increase by $16,508 from 2009 to 2010, while CEOs in practices with fewer FTE physicians saw a decrease in compensation from 2009 to 2010.

3. EHRs: Increase revenue, replace paper charts
Transitioning to EHR system from a paper chart system requires an overhaul of staff skill sets, the redesign of workflow and may also necessitate the addition of new information technology personnel. Many organizations fear that the added cost of setting up an EHR and the lost productivity during implementation will be a bigger detriment to their organization than the benefits it will gain from adopting EHRs.Fortunately, according to the MGMA 2011 Electronic Health Records Module, medical groups that use EHRs reported higher productivity and financial performance than those that still use paper records.

To read the full list of State of Medical Practice trends, as well as online exclusive content, visitvirtual Connexion.