Incorporating cash patients into your practice may be the difference between surviving in practice and thriving in practice.  How you implement your policy to get more patients and improve practice revenue will be the key to your cash practice success.   Your staff needs to be on-board with your policies to make them successful, and this may be more difficult than you first imagine.

Living in rural areas makes it difficult to access different medical services on a consistent basis, especially when emergency situations arise or critical care is needed.  Receiving clinical healthcare at a distance is made possible with the use of information technologies and telecommunication known as Telemedicine.  It allows communication between the medical staff and patient that is both convenient and efficient by transmitting medical information, data and imaging from one site to another.  Those involved with in-home care benefit from this new technology using telemedical devices and support from distributed client/server applications.

As a medical professional, you want to be certain you are promoting your practice with the most time and cost effective marketing, public relations and advertising campaigns. These can be great tools for generating physician referrals, which directs patients to your products and services. Also, boosting patient loyalty is another of the benefits of well-planned marketing efforts. Of course, the goal is to improve your practice revenue.

Dr. Lisa Crigler, DPM FACFAS starts us off:

Regardless of whether you are in an established group practice or a solo provider, one of your main concerns needs to be medical marketing.  The main question you should ask yourself is “what kind of marketing should I do”?  We have all been exposed to different marketing ideas, in other words, things that stick in our heads.  How many of us recall – “How many billions have been served?” or “Home of the what?”  It is that tune we hum in our heads after the commercial plays on the radio.  So what is the best way to convey that information to improve practice revenue?

Why would any healthcare provider want to operate a cash only practice?  This approach would seem to limit the potential patient base to wealthy patients or patients who are healthy and don’t require the services of a doctor.   This assumption is not necessarily true; there are many prospective patients who would value the services of a healthcare provider and would be willing to pay for them.

As a physician, becoming part of a physician referral network is one of the best things you can do for your medical practice. You’ll build relationships that will help ensure the success of your practice even as other sources of revenue evaporate due to changes in the economy and health care system. You can either join an existing referral network or, if you prefer, create one of your own by seeking out and cultivating relationships with other physicians.

If you join an existing network, you’ll have to evaluate it carefully to determine whether or not it meets your needs. To maximize referrals, be sure there are relatively few physicians in your specialty within the network. Make sure the network conforms to patient rules and laws and that the software or platform is easy for your staff to use.

Pill mills have been in the news quite a lot the past few years, and not in a good way. They dole out millions of narcotic prescriptions annually. Often times the line between doing what’s best for the patient and doing what’s best for the bottom line of the pill mill practice gets very shady at these businesses.

“Comprehensive pain centers are very different from "pill mills". Unfortunately the two practices get associated together in the minds of the public.” states David Greene MD, CEO of a pain management center in Phoenix, Arizona and consultant to National Medical Testing Supply (NMTS).  “With the US in the midst of a full onslaught pain medication epidemic, best practice pain centers are regularly being thought of as pill mills when in fact there are considerable differences.”

Although many patients will purposely seek out pill mills for the obvious reasons, as busy medical professionals we certainly don’t want to be referring patients to one or even thought of as one ourelves.  Here are the top 3 reasons pain management centers are different (in a good way) from your standard Pill Mill: