As a physician, your medical practice is your identity – and it is the only branding opportunity you have with your patients.  Like it or not, they associate your face with your practice and will make treatment decisions and recommendations accordingly.  Having accepted that, how do you develop a medical practice marketing strategy as a physician? The first decision you must make is what niche you want to occupy within your specialty.  If you’re a dermatologist, do you want to be seen as the life-saver who identifies and treats skin cancer or as the Botox specialist for the masses?  If…

After a recent  e-survey we received many inquiries asking the definition of “enabled provider”.   By now, most of you have heard of and are somewhat familiar with Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).  A less familiar term that is starting to be used in discussions pursuant to ACOs is Enabled Provider.  An Enabled Provider is simply a Provider (Physician and/or Facility) that is contracted with the ACO.  They are considered enabled due to the fact that they are integrated within the ACO from a contracting, systems and clinical perspective.  Please contact us with any additional ACO questions.

It appears that the legislators in Washington finally got together to pass a bill to raise the nation's debt ceiling by $2.3 trillion through 2013.  This may be good news in the short term, since the nation's credit rating will probably remain the same, at least for a while, so the interest rate the US government has to pay won't increase; but the cuts in the Federal budget tied to the increase in the debt ceiling will directly affect your practice.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) may cause your office some headaches because of the “Patient Protection” aspects of the legislation. There have been high profile cases recently, in which Cignet Health and Massachusetts General Hospital, which were recently hit with $4.3 million and $1 million fines, respectively, due to federal HIPAA privacy and security violations. Donald L. Bradfield, senior counsel in the legal department of Johns Hopkins Health System warns doctors and hospital compliance officers about the teeth that the HHS office for Civil Rights (OCR), which enforces HIPAA regulations, seems to have found.