Practice Management Spotlight

Colorado Orthopedics—A Cinderella Story

One of the hallmarks and best practices of a learning organization is sharing “lessons learned.” We practice this at Clinic Service and so do many of our clients.  The purpose of this column is to share ideas with our community so that we can all learn from each other. When we recently spoke with Dr. John Xenos, an Orthopedic Surgeon with Colorado Orthopedics, he shared a story we thought you would enjoy and learn from.This particular story is near and dear to our hearts because his story begins with the day we met him. John wasn’t particularly happy that day, but you’ll see his story has a happy ending.

The morning we received a “911” call from Skyridge Hospital, the situation we listened to was unfortunately, similar to others we had received over the past few months. “We have a practice that needs your help. They are using an EMR with an integrated medical billing system, and the problem is bills are going out, but cash flow is not coming in. Can you help?” asked the administrator.  We said yes and the next day we met John Xenos and his team.

Dr. Xenos explained that when they started their practice just over two years ago, they followed the advice of a consulting firm to select an EMR and a billing company that was attached to the EMR. Colorado Orthopedics was very successful right from the start and had a high volume of billing. But soon they noticed there was a problem with cash flow.  They talked repeatedly with the billing company, but the situation didn’t improve.

As we analyzed the data with Dr. Xenos and his staff, they immediately realized the problem was collections, not their internal processes. We helped Colorado Orthopedics negotiate a transition and immediately turned off the old billing system and integrated the Clinic Service billing system into the EMR. We set up two accounts; one for collections moving forward and the second for recouping the monies that were previously thought to be uncollectable.

Like all good stories, this one has a happy ending. Colorado Orthopedics began to see a steady stream of cash flow from the current billing cycle. In addition, they recouped every penny of the previously “uncollectable” $500,000 that was billed, but not paid many months prior.

But not every medical practice is this lucky, especially a new medical practice. Fortunately Colorado Orthopedics’ management practices excel in many areas and they quickly asked for assistance instead of hoping things would improve.

So there are several lessons learned in this story:

1. Never, ever wait to ask for help.
2. If you experience cash flow and collections delays, get help before it’s too late. Cash flow is the life line of ANY business.
3. Be careful when installing a new EMR solution that is connected to your medical billing system and processes. Most EMR’s perform well in the area of managing medical records, but many underperform in the area of medical billing.

On this last point, if you are unsure about the performance of a medical billing solution connected to an EMR, just ask us for an evaluation. We work with many different types of EMR’s and have developed interfaces to interoperate with most of them. Simply send an email to Michael Kuehn at mkuehn@clinicservice.com and he’ll set up a meeting.

We wish to send a sincere THANK YOU to John Xenos and team at Colorado Orthopedics for sharing their story!