Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Saturday, January 28th, 2012
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Here is a very simple way to look at how to raise your top line revenue.
1. Perform more services.
2. Perform new services.
3. Improve your coding.
4. Improve your collection rate (percentage of charges that is collected).
I recommend that as you grow revenue you keep checking the averages of other practices to see how you are doing. You can get that info from MGMA, a variety of consultants and possibly your CPA if he/she has a number of physicians as clients. Before I consult with a client that is what I do. I look for the one area of the above four that shows worst performance. Then I devise a plan to go to work on that. You need that kind of focus to get the best results.
David Zahaluk, MD is a revenue enhancement specialist for doctors and the author of “The Ultimate Practice Building Book.”
Tags: Accountants, Accounting, Business, Certified Public Accountant, Firms, PRWEB, Revenue, United States
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Saturday, January 21st, 2012
If you’re like most doctors, you run the practice your way. Your judgment, your experience, your horse-sense, your way or the highway. But what if you’re not a business genius? What if you lack the knowledge, skills and experience to consistently make good business decisons. Or worse, what if you don’t make decisions because you are haunted by past mistakes and bad decisons?
Look, in business everyone has a boss. If you’re self-employed the boss happens to be your patients and your cashflow. Why does everyone have a boss? Because other people (if they are the right people) can get more out of you. If you ran a Fortune 500 company, you would report to the board of directors. All your plans and their implementation would have to be checked and recheked with them. Running a small independent practice can be a huge problem if you are not regularly making yourself accountable to the numbers and the patient surveys. You need a check mechanism to protect you from your bad decisions or
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inability to make decisions.
Jim Collins says, people first then processes. Collins says get the right people on your team, the wrong people off your team, then get the right people in the right positions and then implement your strategy. He’s right.
David Zahaluk, MD is a revenue enhancement specialist for doctors and the author of “The Ultimate Practice Building Book.”
Tags: Business, Collins, Decision making, Facebook, Fortune 500, Jim Collins, Small Business, United States
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Saturday, December 31st, 2011
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From all of us at UPB, have a safe and happy New Year. It’s now 2012, I hope those Mayans were wrong!
And please don’t drink and drive, it’s not cool.
David Zahaluk, MD is a Dallas-based practice optimization expert and the author of The Ultimate Practice Building Book. His firm, Ultimate Practice Builder, takes physicians to the top 10% of their specialty – in income, time off and quality indicators - within 3 years… guaranteed. Learn more at www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com.
Tags: Dallas, LiveScience, Maya calendar, Maya civilization, Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, New Year's Day, Orlando Sentinel, United States Naval Observatory
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Sunday, December 25th, 2011
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From all of us at UPB, have a Merry, Merry Christmas.
And please don’t drink and drive, it’s not cool.
David Zahaluk, MD is a Dallas-based practice optimization expert and the author of The Ultimate Practice Building Book. His firm, Ultimate Practice Builder, takes physicians to the top 10% of their specialty – in income, time off and quality indicators - within 3 years… guaranteed. Learn more at www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com.
Tags: Business, Christmas, Dallas, David Zahaluk, Holidays, Ultimate Practice Builder, Ultimate Practice Building Book, www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com
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Thursday, December 15th, 2011
Something to think about for 2012: It’s time to raise prices. If you are privately negotiating with insurance companies, show them your quality data and ask for higher reimbursement. If you use an IPA, find out what they are are doing to get you better pricing. The rest of the world is not going to charge you less becuase you are charging less.
Also, where is there growth in your practice? Are there more cash pay patients, more with higher reimbursed insurances (top 50%) or more with lower reimbursed insurances (bottom 50%). Think of it this way. Your practice is like a garden. Are you growing more weeds or flowers?
David Zahaluk, MD is a Dallas-based practice optimization expert and the author of The Ultimate Practice Building Book. His firm, Ultimate Practice Builder, takes physicians to the top 10% of their specialty – in income, time off and quality indicators - within 3 years… guaranteed. Learn more at www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com.
Tags: Business, Dallas, David Zahaluk, Financial Services, Insurance, Ultimate Practice Builder, Ultimate Practice Building Book, www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com
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Thursday, December 1st, 2011
If you file your IRS taxes based on calendar year, it’s time to sit down with your CPA and figure out what you must do to maximize deductions and defer income. DO this one right now. You can have a phone meeting if everyone is too busy to meet in person. Don’t wait – schedule this meeting right now.
David Zahaluk, MD is a Dallas-based practice optimization expert and the author of The Ultimate Practice Building Book. His firm, Ultimate Practice Builder, takes physicians to the top 10% of their specialty – in income, time off and quality indicators - within 3 years… guaranteed. Learn more at www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Tags: Business, Certified Public Accountant, Dallas, David Zahaluk, Ultimate Practice Builder, Ultimate Practice Building Book, United States, www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com
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Thursday, November 24th, 2011
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Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving. Go Detroit Lions!
David Zahaluk, MD is a Dallas-based practice optimization expert and the author of The Ultimate Practice Building Book. His firm, Ultimate Practice Builder, takes physicians to the top 10% of their specialty – in income, time off and quality indicators - within 3 years… guaranteed. Learn more at www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com.
Tags: Business, Dallas, David Zahaluk, Holiday, Thanksgiving, Ultimate Practice Builder, Ultimate Practice Building Book, www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com
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Sunday, November 20th, 2011
Most people are not happy. 9/10 people say that are not happy with their bodies. A majority of people are not optimistic about the future. A lot of doctors are afraid of the direction that medicine is taking them.
I have a simple idea to put forward. Your reality is your representation of the events of your life so far. You make projections about your future based on your beliefs right now. But the whole of your life hasn’t played out yet. When he was in his early 20′s Billy Joel was suicidal. He was sick and tired of playing in piano bars around New York for a bunch of drunks and he felt that he would never become famous or successful. On top of that he met the love of his life and she dumped him. Now he thought he would never ever win the love of anyone nearly as beautiful as her.
So Billy checked himself into a mental institution. That was his wake up call. The problems Billy thought were so unbearable were nothing compared to what everyone else there had. Billy actually began to feel grateful that he was relatively healthy and highly functioning. So he left and rededicated himself to his music. The rest is history.
Whether or not you are happy or not depends on (1)
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what you focus on about your life and (2) the meaning you attach to that.
Decide to be happy. If you can’t be happy, what else is there?
David Zahaluk, MD is a Dallas-based practice optimization expert and the author of The Ultimate Practice Building Book. His firm, Ultimate Practice Builder, takes physicians to the top 10% of their specialty – in income, time off and quality indicators - within 3 years… guaranteed. Learn more at www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com.
Tags: Billy Joel, Business, Dallas, David Zahaluk, New York, Ultimate Practice Builder, Ultimate Practice Building Book, www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com
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Sunday, November 13th, 2011
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One of your main jobs is to continually set higher and higher standards for your practice. No matter how good you already are keep asking yourself, “how can I make this better”? Keep setting higher standards until everyone who touches your practices would like to work in it.
David Zahaluk, MD is a Dallas-based practice optimization expert and the author of The Ultimate Practice Building Book. His firm, Ultimate Practice Builder, takes physicians to the top 10% of their specialty – in income, time off and quality indicators – within 3 years… guaranteed. Learn more at www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com.
- Retention Marketing (ultimatepracticebuilder.com)
- Attracting the Best People (ultimatepracticebuilder.com)
Tags: Business, Dallas, David Zahaluk, Health care, Time management, Ultimate Practice Builder, Ultimate Practice Building Book, www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com
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Monday, October 31st, 2011
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Have a happy, fun, scary, playful, outrageous, safe, but not too safe Hallowe’en.
David Zahaluk, MD is a Dallas-based practice optimization expert and the author of The Ultimate Practice Building Book. His firm, Ultimate Practice Builder, takes physicians to the top 10% of their specialty – in income, time off and quality indicators - within 3 years… guaranteed. Learn more at www.UltimatePracticeBuilder.com.
- Happy Hallowe’en! (notthedestinationbut.wordpress.com)
- Hallowe’en (ephiriel.wordpress.com)
Tags: Christmas, Costume, Dallas, Hallow, Halloween, Pumpkin, Trick-or-treating, United States
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