Spring Has Us Sprung

Dr. R. A. Foxworth, FICC, MCS-P

It’s spring when, it’s said, a young man’s fancy turns to love. Unless that man (or woman) is a chiropractor. In which case, their thoughts are more likely to be something like “AAAAHHH! It’s the second quarter of the year and I’m already behind!”

Most of us, chiropractors and otherwise, start the year with good and perhaps even big intentions. This will be the year, we say, when we’ll finally get our billing and collections department organized and our reimbursement rate up. This is the year when we’ll figure out our actual fee and start using a written, formalized fee schedule. This is the year we’ll get right with Medicare and HIPAA. And in 2015, this is the year we’ll be ready for ICD-10 long before the October 15 deadline!

We say it, and we mean it. But that doesn’t mean we, and your members, have the time or wherewithal to actually do it. And that’s important to be aware of. Because the second quarter of the year is when all that significant work happens, if it’s going to happen at all. By third quarter, we’re knee deep in seminar season and this year we’re right on top of that ICD-10 deadline. By the fourth quarter, most of your members will begin to think, “Oh, well, we’ll get to that next year.”

And so it goes.

You know as well as I do that chiropractors, by nature, are individuals inclined to strike out on their own paths. But here’s a case where your members really could use your help. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day for the average DC to evaluate and treat patients, write up notes for documentation, market and manage the practices, and oh, by the way, learn a whole new coding language.

Your members rely on their practice teams to support them, even when that “team” may be only a single CA or a go-getter spouse. But they need more. They need you, and all the expert guidance and expertise you provide. They need to be educated and trained on ICD-10, Medicare rules, avoiding documentation red flags, and how to steer clear of red flag behavior like inadvertently having a dual fee schedule in place. All it takes is one well-intentioned discount to a longtime patient in need or falling into the pitfalls of inducement to put them in peril. These last two are especially important, because chiropractors are, at heart, healers, not business professionals. It’s so tempting to try and help the financially challenged, even when it puts the practice at risk.

That’s where ChiroHealthUSA can make a big difference. We’re a network that works in conjunction with a Discount Medical Plan Organization (DMPO) to give chiropractors the means to offer safe, legal discounts to financially challenged patients based on their practice’s actual fee schedule. That means your members don’t have to worry about dual fee schedules, inducement, and the resulting risk of being audited that comes with them. We also provide access to our colleagues who are experts at documentation, reimbursement, compliance, coding, patient finances, and billing and collections through our on-going webinar series…FREE to your members in most cases.

There is no cost to the doctor with an affordable $49 fee per patient family per year, easily recovered in the first patient visit. We offer a free on-demand webinar that explains the benefits of becoming a ChiroHealthUSA provider as well as how to easily offer membership to patients. Invite your members to register for one of our webinars. Have a great spring!