10 | ChiropraCtiC produCts • issue Five 2018

As chiropractors we have a natural instinct to heal and help people get their lives back. Build-ing your practice and

managing it properly is a vital aspect of doing more to achieve the goal of helping and healing the world – one patient at a time. While we are doing our part to help each patient live in good health we still need to make a living; plus, the more suc-cessful we are the more likely we’ll be able to help even more patients.

So often, while our commitment and dedication to our purpose is strong, there are only so many hours in a day. How do we find more time, reduce distraction, and still stay on top of all the regulations

and requirements needed to treat patients with our undivided attention, be profitable so we can grow our business, and stay compliant – all at the same time?

Top Time And Energy KillersHiring, firing, and training are some of the most tedious tasks small clinics face, and take time away from your patients; cause disorganization as new team members get up to speed; and ultimately hinder you from focus-ing on how to effectively grow your business to realize your goals for success. Unfortunately, you might find the right people to hire, but the tools and software you’re using to run your practice handcuffs them from truly helping you find the time and success you envision. Conversely, with the

right chiropractic software, even ho-hum employees can help you reach your goals.

Choosing the right practice manage-ment and Electronic Health Record (EHR) platform may be the most im-portant “hire” your practice acquires. For a few hundred dollars per month (a fraction of the cost of a part-time biller), the right software can do most of the work needed, helping to keep you compliant, improving your ability to manage your practice, and thereby freeing up your time to focus on strategies to more effectively build your business.

How Much Time Is Lost?For you and your staff, how much time is lost making sure patient care,

by Dr. Evan Gwilliam

The Right Office SoftwareCan Be Your Best Employee For

Practice Building & Practice Management

issue Five 2018 • ChiropraCtiC produCts | 11

payments and billing, and schedul-ing are all being done correctly to maximize clinical results and revenue expectations for each patient? How many claims bounce back because they are considered “dirty”? Are you using multiple different software applications to accomplish several different areas of patient care? How much time is lost learning, then train-ing staff on different systems, and then trying to keep track of it all to manually integrate the management of each patient (including the billing, scheduling, payments, etc. that go with it)?

This lost time is the critical hours you could be using to better care for patients, or to focus on the marketing needed to monthly add new patients to your practice. Ten or twenty hours per week could be redirected into growth if your software were able to handle most of the tedious adminis-trative tasks that you no longer would need staff to oversee. In addition to compliant and fast treatment plans and SOAP Notes, your software can make sure that your billing and cod-ing is accomplished properly, thereby improving cash flow and streamlining office processes.

The Perfect Hire For PracticeManagement And GrowthUnfortunately, this is a paradox. Finding the perfect hire to help man-age your practice, show compassion with a smile to your patients, answer the phone, and re-schedule patients properly is definitely possible. How-ever, you won’t find that same hire also knows state requirements, com-pliance guidelines, and billing codes; typically, that type of experience and knowledge is only represented by extremely costly practice consultants.

Most of us cannot afford expensive consultants to be on hand day-to-day to make sure we’re keeping a compliant practice, properly billing, and helping us avoid recoupment in the case of an audit. So how do you better manage and grow your prac-tice in a compliant, affordable and consistent way without having

to pay consultants a great chunk of your earnings?

Hire The Right Software FirstHaving the right EHR in place for your practice can make or break the success of your practice, and can be the key element in whether your staff helps you manage your practice, or makes a mess of everything.

There are now many EHR platforms available that integrate several of the key aspects of the successful management and growth of your practice. Does your chiropractic software fully integrate every aspect of patient care? Is it easy for your staff to answer patient questions such as “How much do I owe for my care at this point?” Does it automatically tie your SOAP Notes into the unique treatment plan that’s been created for each patient? Does it securely pro-cess patients’ credit card payments and apply to visits? Does it help you maintain a compliant practice without extra effort so you get paid, while allowing you peace-of-mind in case of an audit?

Due diligence in selecting the right software for your practice can be the deciding factor in the future growth of your practice, making hiring and training easier; improving clinical results for patients; and providing you with the time needed to plan and implement the steps required for more growth and higher earnings.

Compliance – Keeping What You Have EarnedIf a third party decides to audit your practice, they may be able to request paybacks in excess of $100,000. For most practices, amounts like this can put you out of business. You and your team put in a great deal of work to help patients reclaim their lives – now imagine an audit hits you so hard that it nearly puts you out of business? It’s not right to work so hard just to have an audit take it all away from you due to poor docu-mentation and/or billing. Growing your practice in a compliant way will enable you to continue helping your

patients, while staying in the black. You just need to have the right tools.

Compliance is not something to ignore. Luckily there is software that can address many of your com-pliance issues automatically, thus lightening your load. For example, your staff should not need to review every record to ensure that you’ve properly documented the total time for a code, e.g. 97110 therapeutic exercises. Compliant software should be able to pick that up and prompt the provider to include those essential details in records that support the billing automatically.

The last thing you want is for a payer to request records and find out that you have been billing for years for time-based codes but neglecting to support it in the documentation. From a time and cost standpoint the nature of an audit like that can be devastat-ing to a practice

What you need to do is know the rules and have the right tools. The best software can help with both; it can be the tool that solves all of your issues with a wide range of things, from scheduling and reminders to billing and clearinghouse reports. And the ideal program will prevent you from breaking the above-men-tioned rules. (As it is, you have enough trouble keeping the money flowing in from third party payers.) If the program can prevent you from submitting dirty claims, i.e. claims that are missing simple things like a patient’s address, that is one less barrier to payment.

A compliant practice will run more smoothly and be ready for true growth. Especially in the case of

14 | ChiropraCtiC produCts • issue Five 2018

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Continued From Page 11 compliance, prevention is always better than ignoring it and then risking paying it all back. If your office out-lines policies and procedures that keep you from being targeted by regulators it will free up staff to work on other revenue-generating activities. As they say, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Software that has been designed with compliance in mind can remove some of the burden of learning how to be compli-ant and ensure that the office works in a way that follows the rules, without additional training or overstressing new hires.

What’s Next?Hiring, as we know, can be extremely difficult, so you need to focus on making sure that you have the right EHR software in place – and think of it as an affordable employee that already knows all the rules. Then, when it comes to hiring a CA or a front desk person, half of the challenging efforts of training are already done. All that is needed then is to show them how to manage the proper workflow of the software, without expecting them to instantaneously understand coding, compliance requirements, and the pitfalls that can sink you if audited. Let your EHR be the trainer.

Of course, your personality and the characteristics of your practice are different from every other clinic out there, so hire according to your own principles, vision, goals, and the particular requirements thereof. However, while your style of running your business may be different than others, compliance and requirements for billing and treatment protocols force us all into the same guidelines. And using a chiropractic EHR that automatically guides you and your staff to be more organized and compliant will allow you more time and freedom to consider how to grow and manage your practice successfully, and with peace-of-mind.

About The Author: Dr. Evan Gwilliam, Clinical Director forPayDC Chiropractic EHR, graduated from Palmer College ofChiropractic as valedictorian and is a Certified ProfessionalCoding and ICD-10 Instructor, Medical Compliance Specialist,and Certified Professional Medical Auditor. A clinician with aBachelor’s degree in accounting and a Master’s of BusinessAdministration, Dr. Gwilliam is a sought-after speaker. Heprovides expert witness testimony, medical record audits,consulting and online courses for healthcare providers, andhe has authored and contributed to many reference booksas well as articles for numerous publications.