Group Practice Management Operations
Running a medical practice is unlike any other task in healthcare. Physicians and administrators are continually seeking to balance the demands of physicians and patients against ever-tightening resources. Health systems and hospitals, for their part, are struggling to adapt their core business and operations structures to manage their new business line – physician group practices. Mismanaged business processes have threatened the overall financial health of these newly integrated healthcare systems.
ECG has extensive experience working with physician group practices: both independent medical groups and hospital-owned practices. Our comprehensive expertise in compensation planning, practice operations, revenue cycle management, payor contracting, and IT system optimization provides our clients with real solutions that obtain real results. We will work with you to develop specific improvement plans related to your critical organizational, management, and operational issues. Within group practice operations, you will find value regarding:
- Improving your operational and financial performance of physician practices, including physician compensation, employment arrangements, revenue cycle operations, and practice management.
- Developing the organizational, operational, and work flow structures necessary for hospitals and medical groups to contract, bill, and collect for the healthcare services you deliver.
- Enhancing information system optimization and obtaining greater leverage from your practice’s technology solution.
Selected Projects
Developing a compensation arrangements and operations plan for a primary care practice. Expand Minimize
ECG assisted a hospital in executing its primary care strategy through developing and implementing an employment relationship with a large primary care practice within the market. This engagement included assessing the practice, establishing an employment framework, designing a production-based compensation plan, developing a financial projection to determine the economic impact to the hospital, facilitating contract execution, and providing operational support for the practice’s transition to the hospital.
Providing interim management and system conversion assistance for a hospital employed physician network. Expand Minimize
ECG assisted a health system with revenue cycle and practice management assistance of its employed physician practices. Our efforts focused on restructuring operations to support the implementation of a practice management information system, including the development of a transition plan, revised work flows, and enhanced financial management systems to monitor revenue cycle performance. The project resulted in the successful implementation of the new system and a reduction of days in accounts receivable from 120 to 90.
Providing interim management for a 100-physician integrated delivery network. Expand Minimize
ECG provided interim revenue cycle management services for approximately 100 physicians throughout a hospital-owned network. After reviewing the management structure, scope of administrative services, and key financial indicators, we developed a plan to enhance revenue cycle performance and provided interim management services to implement these recommendations. Two months after initiating the provision of interim management services and implementing the enhancement plan, the monthly cash flow had improved by 25 percent.
Redesigning revenue cycle processes and increasing cash flow for a faculty practice plan. Expand Minimize
ECG was retained by a large academic center to examine the faculty practices’ charge capture, billing, and collections processes; identify available opportunities to increase cash income; and prepare an implementation plan for the corresponding improvements. At the completion of the project, the practices had implemented a new organizational structure for the reimbursement services division; designed a summary-level management reporting tool; identified a potential 20 percent reduction in staff; reduced external collection agency fees by $30,000 per month; and improved overall gross and net collection rates by 2 percent.
Developing a vision, mission, structure, and operations plan for a multispecialty group. Expand Minimize
ECG assisted a 173-physician multispecialty group in creating a governance model to transition from a loosely connected collection of practices to a more coordinated and effective multispecialty group. As part of this engagement, we were able to demonstrate real strategic gains through the development of an operations plan that was successfully implemented.
