Practice Ownership and Operations

Resources here run the gamut from practice start-up tips and best practices for hiring staff to patient satisfaction surveys and locating discounted office supplies. 

Ownership

• Opening a Practice (.pdf, 5 pages)
  When a doctor is opening a new practice, the following information will provide a step by step process from setting up utilities to ensuring your contracts with Health Insurers are up to date.
• Resources for Starting a Practice in Massachusetts
• Creating a Business Plan: A Guide to Developing and Writing a Business Plan for Your Practice
• Practice Valuation: A Guide to Establishing a Baseline Value for Your Practice
• Evaluating Practice Costs in Massachusetts: A Guide to Assessing Practice Operations(.pdf, 7 pages)
  This guide will provide specific steps to assist practices evaluating operating costs. It provides a general template for the evaluation and discusses how operating costs may be classified and considered.
• Global Payments and Accountable Care Organizations  
  This Massachusetts Medical Society white paper provides an overview of global payments and accountable care organizations, and outlines the issues physicians must consider when either establishing or joining an accountable care organization.
• Payer Contracts: Understanding the Essentials
• Modeling Revenue Flow
  This document is provided to help doctors understand the process of revenue evaluation and the value of modeling revenue flow.
• Securing Your Identity: Prospective and Retrospective Considerations
  Reports of possible breaches of physician data make it imperative that physicians maintain the security of their personal and professional data. This white paper discusses how to identify and reduce risks, and what to do if your data has been stolen, or if you believe it may have been stolen.
• Practice Insurance Checklist
• Practice Closing Checklist
  Summary of tasks to be considered and completed in preparation for closing a practice 

ICD-10 Resources

Operations

• Prior Authorization Tips for Physician Practices
  Several tips for practices to help them navigate the prior authorization process. It also provides contact information and policies at each major health plan operating in Massachusetts for imaging, procedures and drugs.
• Massachusetts Prescription Monitoring Program
  Links to the program's registration form and other information about the program.
  
• Adding Value to Practice: Being Ready for a Billing Audit
  From the Sept. 2012 issue of Vital Signs: A practice can survive a billing audit with preparation, education, and a well-outlined internal plan.
  
• Medical Audits: What Physicians Need to Know 
  A white paper from The Physicians Advocacy Institute to assist physicians and their practice staff in understanding and appealing medical audits by RACs and commercial payers. (.pdf, 23 pages
• Optimizing Workflow to Maximize Practice Efficiency Opportunities
  A guide to assist physicians in maximizing their practice efficiency opportunities.
• Office-Based Surgery Guidelines
  The purpose of these guidelines is to promote patient safety in the non-hospital setting during procedures that require the administration of local anesthesia, conscious sedation, deep sedation, general anesthesia, or minor or major conduction blockade.
• Suggested Guidelines for Endoscopies for Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) 
  The Massachusetts worked in collaboration with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, who provided network data on utilization, specific to endoscopies with the diagnosis of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD). (.pdf, 5 pages, 76 kb)
• Red Flags Rules Guidance: Understanding the Rules and Implementing a Solution in Your Practice
  An MMS white paper that covers what physician practices must do to comply with the Federal Trade Commission's pending requirements for an identity theft prevention program. (.pdf, 4 pages)
• WISP Guidance: Understanding the Rule and Implementing a Solution in Your Practice
  Massachusetts has promulgated one of the nation's strictest personal information data security regulations in the nation, known as the Written Information Security Program (WISP). This white paper identifies the elements that physician practices need to consider to comply with this regulation. (.pdf, 5 pages)
• Hosting and Transferring Electronic Medical Records
  Health care systems and other organizations that host electronic medical records of private practice physicians on their networks often face legal and financial questions surrounding the EMR when physicians leave the network. (.pdf, 5 pages, 132 kb)
• MMS Guide to Massachusetts Health Plan Coverage and Requirements
  The Health Plan Roadmap was created as a guide for physicians to view Health Plan administrative policies.
• Handling Patient Receipts and Transactions: Developing a Practice Financial Policy
  A guide for developing a practice policy for collecting patient copayments and deductibles.
• Developing a Practice Financial Policy for Handling Patient Receipts and Transactions
• Time Calculator Employee Time Sheet (.xls)
• Practice Leave Balance Calculator (.xls)

Closing a Practice

• Issues for the Retiring Physician
• Physician's Survivor Information (.pdf, 24 pages)
  A resource for spouses/ families when a physician dies.

Human Resources

• Model Physician Employment Contract(.pdf, 604 kb)
• Model Medical Staff ByLaws
  The MMS has developed model bylaws to help hospital medical staffs draft or revise their bylaws. The MMS model is based on Massachusetts and Massachusetts Medical Society policy and its principles for incident-based peer review. (Members-only content)

Marketing and Patient Satisfaction

• Medical Practice Marketing(.pdf, 249 kb)
• Patient Satisfaction Surveys  (.pdf, 241 kb)