The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has published guidance on avoiding a 2 percent reduction in Medicare payments for physicians who are not participating in the Electronic Prescribing Incentive Program by June 30, 2013:

“A major Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program deadline is approaching for both individual eligible professionals (EPs) and group practices participating in the Group Practice Reporting Option (GPRO).  If you are an EP or an eRx GPRO participant, you must successfully report as an electronic prescriber before June 30, 2013 or you will experience a payment adjustment in 2014 for professional services covered under Medicare Part B’s Physician Fee Schedule (PFS.)

“The 2013 eRx Incentive Program 6-month reporting period (January 1, 2013 to June 30, 2013) is the final reporting period available to you if you wish to avoid the 2014 eRx payment adjustment.

If you do not successfully report, a payment adjustment of 2.0% will be applied, and you will receive only 98.0% of your Medicare Part B PFS amount for covered professional services in 2014.

Avoiding the 2014 eRx Payment Adjustment

“Individual EPs and eRx GPRO participants who were not successful electronic prescribers in 2012 can avoid 2014 eRx payment adjustment by meeting specified reporting requirements between January 1, 2013 and June 30, 2013. Below are the 6-month reporting requirements:

* Individual EPs – 10 eRx events via claims

* eRx GPRO of 2-24 EPs – 75 eRx events via claims

* eRx GPRO of 25-99 EPs – 625 eRx events via claims

* eRx GPRO of 100+ EPs – 2,500 eRx events via claims

Exclusions and Hardships Exemptions

“Exclusions from the 2014 eRx payment adjustment only apply to certain individual EPs and group practices, and CMS will automatically exclude those individual EPs and group practices who meet the criteria. More information on exclusion criteria and hardship exception categories can be found on theElectronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program: 2014 Payment Adjustment Fact Sheet.

Resources from CMS

“Additional resources on the 2014 payment adjustment are available on the eRx Incentive Program Payment Adjustment Information webpage, including the resource Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program: Updates for 2013.

Questions about eRx?

“If you have questions regarding the eRx Incentive Program, eRx payment adjustments, or need assistance submitting a hardship exemption request, please contact the QualityNet Help Desk at 866-288-8912 (TTY 1-877-715-6222) or via qnetsupport@sdps.org. The Help Desk is available Monday through Friday from 7am-7pm CT.

“To learn more about the eRx Incentive Program and program alignment under the CMS eHealth initiative, please visit www.CMS.gov/eHealth.”

I got my first patient from Facebook three years ago. She was living in Panama, had ties to my area, and found the Facebook page I set up for my practice. She saw me for a second opinion in the office and had a good experience.

Would she have found me otherwise? Probably. But she was on Facebook, and my presence there made things easier for her.

Social media is simply a modern form of word of mouth advertising. Patients have been talking to their friends about their doctors since the beginning. Online social media is just a technology-driven extension of that phenomenon.

The most important question to ask before using social media in your practice is: “What benefits will I get from this that I can track?” Carefully consider the answers you get: more patients, more revenue, better exposure, more media coverage, etc., are all potential and real answers.

Many of my subscribers ask me, “What’s the easiest way to get started?” Sign up for accounts with all the major social media outlets: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.

Start by searching. Listen to what others are saying, what videos they are making. Look for physicians and other healthcare providers online who are doing what you want to do. Follow doctors on Twitter. Find YouTube channels with videos relevant to your practice. Find similar colleagues on LinkedIn. Start bookmarking, following, and “liking.”

There’s no pressure. Just begin to be aware of how physicians are connecting, sharing, and improving their practices using social media. To stay current, you need to be where patients are online. You want to be easy to find and easy to connect with. Both current and potential patients are on social media — baby boomers are looking at pictures of their grandchildren on Facebook and teenagers are essentially being raised on Twitter. It’s becoming easier for physicians to be right there with them, at low cost, low energy, and low risk.

Don’t believe the dire warnings that you’ve missed the social media boat. Very few doctors have a professional presence on social media. That means if you beat your competitors to it, you’ll be miles ahead of them before they realize it.

Even if you just put some social media sharing buttons on your existing website, you are connecting your practice to the “social Web.” For instance, my most popular page on my practice website has been shared or “liked” on Facebook by 27 readers as of this writing.

The bottom line? Don’t dismiss social media, but start exploring for yourself how other physicians are using social media judiciously to connect with and educate patients.

C. Noel Henley, MD is an Arkansas-based orthopedic surgeon and founder of ReachPatients.com, providing marketing and practice promotion guidance for physicians. Do you think social media is a boon or burden for private practices? Tell us at editor@physicianspractice.com. Unless you say otherwise, we’ll assume that we’re free to publish your comments in upcoming issues of Physicians Practice, in print and online. Have a “Bigger Picture” opinion of your own? Send it along via e-mail and we’ll consider it for a future issue.

This article originally appeared in the April 2013 issue of Physicians Practice

Until 2011, Washington Radiology Services, a multi-location practice in the nation’s capital and suburbs, offered the same basic two-dimensional mammograms as most of its peers.

So when the practice decided to invest millions in more than a dozen 3-D mammography units (plus related software upgrades and workstations), it bet on the premise that patients would be willing to spend extra money out of pocket for a service not yet covered by commercial payers.

“We invested in [them] because we believe it’s the best technology available for patients,” says administrator Patrick Waring, noting that patients pay a $50 fee to undergo testing with the 3-D machine, a process also known as breast tomosynthesis. Waring declined to specify exactly how much the group spent on the technology.

Fewer than 18 months later, the investment has started to pay off in both tangible and intangible ways. To date, 35,000 patients have opted for 3-D scans, opening up a new revenue source for the practice and increasing the frequency of related breast-care services such as biopsies.

Best of all, the machines, which work by rotating around the breast in an arc to create images at up to 70 different angles, help physicians detect cancer sooner.

“This allows the radiologist to see past architectural distortions,” says Waring. “It gives them better information for detecting cancers and reducing false positives.”

Breast tomosynthesis is cutting-edge diagnostic medicine. But for Washington Radiology, it also represents a way to grow its business: by offering its patient base an in-demand service, and asking them to pay for it. What the practice has found is that patients are not only willing to pay for services they value — they’re happy to.

Your practice can follow this path, too. Driving new revenue through ancillary service lines can be a bulwark against the declining revenue and increasing overhead common to modern practice, and the services can be big patient pleasers.

But be warned: Not every ancillary service is right for every practice. The key is to pick services your patients want and need, that provide them a legitimate benefit, and that you can perform without major disruption to your regular operations.

Traditional revenue streams

Before you rack your brain for an ingenious instant-millionaire idea, consider some of the less-glamorous, traditional ways to make a little extra money.

Former anesthesiologist William Dirkes is president and chief research officer of Cincinnati-based Sentral Clinical Research Services, LLC, which helps office-based physicians conduct pharmaceutical drug trials. Dirkes estimates that only about 5 percent of practicing physicians conduct drug trials in their practices, due to worries about the process, the potential startup costs, or the ethics. The upfront work includes researching the drug trial and getting patients signed up, among other tasks, and some physicians are uncomfortable with allowing their patients to be part of an experiment.

“It’s not just something you can slap onto your practice,” says Dirkes, adding that initial training on ethical issues and research on the drug and disease can take about five hours. Physicians will also have to spend 15 minutes or so a week to keep up with what’s going on. “It’s not a lot, but it’s not like just writing an order for a test.”

But if you can invest the time, you’ll reap the benefits. —Your patients can benefit, too. If physicians are looking to improve outcomes for a particular population — say, diabetes patients — offering a cutting-edge medication might make a huge difference.

“I had a couple of physicians last year who increased their income 10 to 20 percent,” says Dirkes.

Bone density testing is another common, and seemingly easy, revenue opportunity. But be careful: Experts say this service works as an add-on only if it can be done for a high volume of patients.

“Bone density testing used to have a fairly high reimbursement, and therefore the investment in the bone densitometer used to have a fairly high [return on investment], but the bone densitometer tool is very, very pricy,” says Nina Grant, vice president and agency managing director for Practice Builders, and managing partner for Ancillarypractice.com.
Because insurance typically covers bone density testing only once every few years for patients in a certain age range, the patient base would have to warrant it. To get the maximum financial benefit, a practice would probably want to consider marketing bone-health testing as part of a larger, exercise- and nutrition-based program, says Grant. In such a program, practices can ask patients to pay out of pocket for more frequent testing, can offer the testing to a wider range of patients, and can offer additional ancillary services within the context of an overall wellness program.

Moreover, practices starting such a program might want to refer the bone densitometry out until they see a large enough volume to justify the capital expense.

Before upgrading all 15 machines to include the 3-D software, Waring says his practice installed software on two machines for a four-month trial period at one location. “What if only 20 percent of our patients decided they wanted this technology? We would have only needed one 3-D machine at each office.”

Thinking creatively

Miami-based primary-care physician Oliver Di Pietro has spent more than 20 years offering a wide variety of ancillary services — including abdominal ultrasounds, pelvic ultrasounds, bone density tests, and nuclear stress tests.

But, according to Di Pietro, the additional revenue from these ancillary offerings paled in comparison to his latest venture: a ketogenic enteral-nutrition weight loss program called the “KE Diet.”

“The most lucrative endeavor that I did has been my fight to reverse obesity in my practice,” says Di Pietro. In 2011, he began offering the 10-day program, in which patients receive calorie-controlled nutrients through feeding-tube infusions. “I’ve seen a dramatic improvement in diabetic control, reversal of metabolic syndrome, improvement of cholesterol level, and a healthier appearance and lifestyle of the patients.”

The practice charges patients $1,500 for the program, and so far 200 patients have completed it. The costs include equipment, nutritional formulas, lab work, three office visits per week for monitoring, and training on how to use the tubes. As an added bonus, he is earning additional revenue by licensing the weight-loss program to other physicians.

Finding your natural fit

Making money is great, but most physicians need to do something they’re happy with and that fits their personality, says North Charleston, S.C.-based, solo doc Craig Koniver, a self-described “organic medicine physician” who now makes at least one-third of his income from products and services that are complementary to basic patient visits.

A few years ago, Koniver stopped taking traditional insurance and made the switch to a direct-pay, membership-based practice focused on natural health and medicine. In addition to practicing medicine, Koniver offers a number of ancillary services, from nutritional IV therapies to consultations with docs who want to incorporate natural-health ideas into their practices. He also sells his own branded nutritional health supplements online.

“I’m a big believer in nutritional supplements and how they have a huge benefit to health,” says Koniver. “It has provided a tremendous revenue stream that’s consistent year after year, and it helps the patients.”

Experts advise doctors to offer new services that add value to their existing practices and that their patients actually want. It turns patients off when practices just seem to be trying to make a buck, says Grant.

“Clinicians need to follow dollars that are already in the market, and … choose niches that are clinically relevant, rather than investing in, say, a hair removal laser because an eloquent equipment rep convinces them to do so,” she says. Grant recalled seeing a poster for a gynecologist offering eyelash enhancement. “I was confused and put off, wondering ‘Why would my gynecologist help me with my eyelashes?’”

Five ideas

Still not sure which service to add? Grant says the following are among some of the most profitable service additions for physician practices that don’t require a lot of investment.

1. Hormone testing/balancing. Today, there are a number of supplemental hormones that can ease patients into menopause or andropause, ease depression, or improve other health conditions. As such, testing for hormone deficiencies is a growing area of medicine, says Grant. But as with any test, make sure offering these has a purpose. “The doctor really has to know what they’re going to do with the information,” says Grant. “You don’t want a doctor adding tests just for the sake of adding tests. That’s not ethical.”

2. Cosmetic enhancements. While most physicians know about Botox, there are other cosmetic enhancements (such as body contouring) that a growing number of consumers are interested in. These services might make sense for some primary-care physicians, so long as the appropriate safety protocols are followed, and physicians have the market demographics (middle- to upper-income patients) to support it.

3. Pharmaceutical dispensing. If the patient base warrants it, and your state’s medical board doesn’t prohibit it, offering pharmaceutical dispensing might make sense for your practice. In-office dispensaries are more convenient for patients and may improve patient-compliance rates. Practice administrators should be warned that some physicians might see adding a dispensary as a conflict of interest. “Some physicians may be concerned that their prescription behavior may be influenced by the potential income,” says Grant.

4. Weight-loss/nutrition programs. Want to make your practice more whole-health focused? Consider adding a nutrition counselor to help design weight-loss programs (including meal planning, monitoring, and counseling) with patients. Offering medical food (such as snack bars that help ease hunger and lower cholesterol) is another potential revenue source. This is a good opportunity for physicians to use clinically proven, science-based methodologies to help patients lose weight and get healthier. “Too much of the money in the weight-loss sector is going to non-MDs,” says Grant.

5. Clinical laboratory. Adding a clinical lab allows your practice to offer the convenience of on-site lab testing to patients, and brings in additional revenues for offering the service. “This allows the practice to, instead of sending patients off with a lab slip, do testing on site,” says Grant, adding that practices that have three or more physicians, and a greater volume of patients, will benefit most. “They can often bring this niche into their practice for very little money.”

Legal considerations

Before you start offering any new service, it’s important to check for possible legal conflicts at the local and national levels.

The most important law to consider is the physician self-referral law, commonly known as Stark Law, which governs certain referrals for services from one entity to another, if both entities are owned by the same physician (or an immediate family member) and the practices accept Medicare or Medicaid. There are 12 designated health services specified in the law, including clinical lab services, parenteral and enteral nutrients, radiology and imaging services, and some exceptions as well, such as those for in-office ancillary services.

So, for example, “if a radiologist wants to add services such as CAT scans and they own a separate entity, they could run into violation of Stark Law if they referred patients from their practice to get an MRI or advanced CT services,” says Trisha Lotzer, a partner with Phoenix-based Lotzer Law Group and CEO of Physis, Inc.

The good news is that there are a number of exceptions that a practice could meet to be compliant with the law. An attorney would want to check to make sure their ancillary service arrangement meets the criteria for an exception, says Jana Kolarik Anderson, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney with Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough.

Penalties for violating Stark are stiff, starting with claim denials for all claims submitted pursuant to an arrangement that does not meet an exception. There might also be penalties of up to $15,000 for each service, plus double the reimbursement claimed. You can even be excluded  from Medicare and Medicaid.

If Stark weren’t enough to worry about, physicians must also take into account the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, a criminal statute that prohibits physicians from offering something of value to referrers or to patients in order to get a referral for a service covered by Medicare or Medicaid. “The Anti-Kickback Statute comes into play when physicians are contracting with an outside ancillary services provider like a [durable medical equipment] or orthotics company or outside lab,” says Anderson. Practices that want to offer services inside their practice by an outside vendor should seek legal counsel, she says.

“Structuring arrangements so you are compliant with Medicare enrollment standards as well as the Stark Law, state mini-Stark laws, and state and federal anti-kickback laws should be the focus when you bring any ancillary service into your practice,” says Anderson. “It does not cost a lot of money to [check with an attorney] to ensure what you are planning is appropriate. You want to ensure compliance on the front end, so you are not paying penalties on the back end.

Launch tips

Are you ready to launch your new service? Follow these suggestions for getting off the ground and keeping up with your venture:

• Find a mentor. Look for someone who has a track record of success. “When I see physicians, I encourage them to go to networking conferences,” says Mike Woo-Ming, a family physician who now spends most of his time helping other doctors build and market their practices, including adding ancillaries. “If you are starting an age-management clinic, talk to doctors starting successful age-management clinics. If you can, try to work for those clinics. Do some volunteer work.”

• Look at market demographics. Your actual patient demographics — age, income range, education level, and inclinations — should all be factors in your choice of ancillaries, says Grant. This way you avoid buying technology for a service patients can’t afford or don’t need.

• Hammer out financial parameters. Unless you’re a solo physician, you need to be clear about who gets what, revenue-wise. “You have to make sure you have discussed that with your CEO of your medical practice,” says Woo-Ming. “Are you representing yourself or are you representing your practice?”

• Integrate the new niche. After making an investment in new technology that will be the catalyst for a new revenue-generating service, it’s time to start marketing the new service and using the new equipment. “A lot of practices will get a hair-removal laser and it will sit in the corner gathering spider webs,” says Grant. “You need to educate patients about new services.”

In Summary

Find the right ancillary medical services to offer and your practice will boost its bottom line. A few points to consider:

• Make sure your patient population justifies any high-tech purchases.

• Make sure you choose a service that is clinically relevant.

• Before you start offering any new service, it’s important to check for possible legal conflicts.

•Take your patient demographics into account in your choice of ancillaries.

• If you invest in new technology, make sure you market your new service to patients.

While pharmaceutical and medical device companies have the heaviest weight to carry when it comes to collecting data under the Physician Payment Sunshine Act (PDF) beginning August 1, there are a few steps physicians can also take to prepare for the implementation of the rule.

The nearly 300-page document issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in February requires medical product manufacturers to report data annually on payments and gifts given to physicians. To (hopefully) prevent conflicts of interest, that data will become public in a searchable database on the web beginning in the fall of next year.

To address some common questions posed by physicians and share best practices, health IT company RxVantage hosted a webinar Wednesday with Randy Vogenberg, managing principal at consulting firm Bentelligence. RxVantage creates software solutions to connect reps with providers. Here are some of the tips marketing director Vanessa Towning and Vogenberg had to share:

• Educate all of a practice’s licensed providers on the new federal rules, and check on state Sunshine regulations
• Draft a rep visitation policy to ensure that they are in the office when there are the fewest number of patients, and designate a separate waiting area if possible. That way, patients won’t feel like reps are encroaching on their appointment time
• Consider having a daily huddle with staff, which serves as a good time to reiterate procedures and ensure the staff knows how to handle visits from sales reps
• Set a limit for the number of times a rep or company can visit the office within a month or quarter, to ensure you’re getting a rounded perspective and limiting bias
• Make the most out of rep visits by asking questions and learning about their companies’ patient assistance programs, trials and competitors
• Keep an easily accessible electronic record of all rep interactions. Providers will have a 60-day window to identify and respond to discrepancies in reported data before it goes public

Read more: http://medcitynews.com/2013/04/a-physicians-checklist-for-preparing-for-the-sunshine-act/#ixzz2Qw2018I7

Post-payment audits of organizations that received meaningful use incentive payments began in 2012 and pre-payment audits have been added this year. Details of the audits programs are available via an Audit Overview Fact Sheet.

To be ready for an audit if selected, providers now have access to a CMS Supporting Documentation for Audits Fact Sheet to walk them through what types of information are requested and how to comply. Also available are sample audit request letters for eligible professionals and hospitals.

As required by law, President Obama issued a sequestration order on March 1, 2013 requiring across-the-board reductions in Federal spending.

In general, Medicare FFS claims with dates-of-service or dates-of-discharge on or after April 1, 2013, will incur a 2 percent reduction in Medicare payments. Therefore, to prevent making overpayments, interim and pass-through payments related to the Medicare cost report will be reduced by 2 percent.   Beginning April 1, 2013 the 2 percent reduction will be applied to Periodic Interim Payments (PIP), Critical Access Hospital (CAH) and Cancer Hospital interim payments, and pass-through payments for Graduate Medical Education, Organ Acquisition, and Medicare Bad Debts.

Questions about reimbursement should be directed to your Medicare Administrative Contractor.

Available on the Educational Resources page of the EHR Incentive Programs website, the interactive Stage 2 Toolkit includes materials on Stage 2 and the 2014 clinical quality measure (CQM) requirements.

The toolkit is divided into three main sections:

• Basics
• Resources for EPs
• Resources for eligible hospitals and CAHs

Providers who use the toolkit will find the following information:

• An overview of Stage 2
• Stage 2 FAQs
• How the Stage 2 provisions affect Stage 1 requirements
• Comparison tables of Stage 1 and Stage 2 criteria
• Details about payment adjustment and hardship exemptions
• 2014 CQMs, including descriptions, technical release notes, and the recommended core sets for EPs and eligible hospitals

Reminder: The earliest that the criteria for Stage 2 will be effective is the first day of fiscal year 2014 (October 1, 2013) for eligible hospitals and CAHs, or calendar year 2014 (January 1, 2014) for EPs. All providers must achieve meaningful use under the Stage 1 criteria before moving to Stage 2.

Want more information about the EHR Incentive Programs?
Make sure to visit the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs website for the latest news and updates on the EHR Incentive Programs.

Just mention the word “audit” to any physician audience, and you can almost see the collective shiver run down their spines. Their feelings of dread match those when encountering the word “sue!” Unfortunately, the Internal Revenue Service is stepping up their audit enforcement against doctors, based on their perception that doctors make easy targets due to poor record-keeping practices.

Most physicians in medical practice have received some training in reducing their malpractice risk, but little or nothing is taught about how to minimize the risk or impact of a tax audit on your psyche and your practice.

Tax Planning Can Reduce Audit Risks

Recently, many physicians have received letters from the IRS informing them that they are being audited. This notification is frequently accompanied by a laundry list of document requests that goes on for three pages. After overcoming the initial stage of panic, most physicians go to their CPA, who assists them in putting together the documentation requested.

Some potential audit issues can be avoided with more dialogue between the CPA and the physician during the initial return preparation stage. Many CPAs unfortunately take information from their doctor clients and put it on a tax return without enough “questioning.” CPAs frequently complain that physicians do not make the time to meet and thoroughly discuss the material provided, or that the physician has dumped all their records on the CPA just before tax filing is due. “Being too busy” is sometimes just a disguised excuse for procrastination.

Red Flags for Tax Audits

One of the areas that the IRS is focusing on is deductions related to business travel for physicians. It is the belief of the IRS that doctors routinely over-deduct for education-related travel; staying at hotels that are beyond the level and price point of the hotel where a seminar is provided is just one example.

Another hot button item is the notorious lack of doctors’ record keeping, resulting in office expense estimating “guesstimating” as the IRS would call it). A good business manager who works hand-in-hand with physicians can assist in this initial organization phase and nip that problem in the bud.

If an audit is not going well, the CPA will typically recommend bringing in a tax attorney to interface with the IRS. Tax attorneys litigate cases with the IRS in the United States Tax Court, and typically can obtain settlements with the IRS that may save the physician a tremendous amount of money. However, the authors are of the opinion that the entire audit can be avoided or handled very smoothly without any repercussions if the physician had taken some preliminary steps.

Nor is it only the IRS that can come knocking. One of the authors’ clients, a busy family physician with both a private practice and a large nursing home practice, was confronted several years ago with the prospect of a Medicare audit evaluating potential over-coding. This soul-destroying experience involved hundreds of hours of copying and submitting medical records, hiring both an attorney and a coding expert to help defend her case, and a lingering terror of coding too high, such that her resultant under-coding was costing her practice thousands of dollars. She was a good doctor, she was a good person, yet she was a disorganized, stretched-too-thin and ill-prepared business owner. Sound familiar?

IRS Examining Improper Medicare Payments

In 2010, President Obama set three goals for reducing improper Medicare payments, to be achieved by this year:

1. Reduce overall payment errors by $50 billion

2. Cut the Medicare fee-for-service error rate in half

3. Recover $2 billion in improper payments

To begin achieving these goals, CMS focused particularly on number three: improper payments. It’s important to recognize that while all falsified claims are improper payments, not all improper payments are falsified claims. In fact, most are due to ignorance — errors in documentation and not intentional fraud.

Philippa Kennealy, MD MPH CPCC PCC, is president of The Entrepreneurial MD. She is a board-certified family physician who left her own private practice in 1996 to embark on an administrative career as first medical director and then CEO of UCLA-Santa Monica Medical Center. She now works as a business coach with physicians who are striving to be entrepreneurial or businesslike. She is a member of the American College of Physician Executives, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the California Academy of Family Physicians. E-mail her here.

Philip Garrett Panitz, JD, LL.M (Taxation) is a certified tax specialist and has a doctorate of law and a Masters degree in taxation. He has successfully litigated hundreds of tax cases and represented physicians in cases with the IRS. He argued and won the case of Williams v. United States before the United States Supreme Court. E-mail him here.

It’s amazing how many physicians seem invisible (or close to it) when someone does an Internet search. Our consultants were recently called in to help a practice that added a new physician within the past 10 months. When we searched the Internet for this doctor — narrowed to the exact community — she did not show up; despite the fact that there are a growing number of Internet sites that profile physicians in every community.

Physicians’ names, specialties, and addresses appear on rating websites such as HealthGrades.com, Vitals.com, and other directories and review/rating sites that pull information from licensing databases and other public sources. The problem is that the information on these websites is sometimes minimal and often outdated. Through an Internet search it can take a long time for a physician coming out of a fellowship on the East Coast to show up in a California community where she recently took a position, unless someone in the practice makes an effort to ensure there is an accurate listing for this physician. Otherwise, it will be difficult for potential patients to discover this fine physician and that much harder to grow her patient base.

Claiming your space

Claiming your “space” is a process of identifying yourself as the doctor listed on online rating sites. This typically takes only a few minutes, but it is essential to start the process of correcting potentially outdated information. Once you’ve claimed your space, many directories and rating sites allow you to add details to your listing — like a photo, website address, group practice name, and multiple practice locations, which can improve your search ranking and bring your website to the forefront. Taking these steps helps you to ensure the information shown on these sites is correct and allows you to respond in the event a negative review is posted. Data from these various rating sites is used by Google to enhance its search results.

Google Places

In recent years Google has continued emphasizing local Web pages in its search results and this can be a valuable marketing tool for physicians. One of Google’s primary tools in bringing results to the local market is “Google Places,” a system that pulls information from all over the Web to create business profiles for search-firm websites — the program creates directories broken down by professional categories, such as physicians and dentists, but also relies on business owners to verify and develop their own Google Places profile. It allows you to claim your space, correct inaccurate information, update or add additional addresses, and provide a detailed description of your practice and its service mix. Getting professional assistance can help you present your business information in the best light; making your practice more attractive to potential patients searching for a new physician. It can provide a great return on investment. Such additions give a huge competitive advantage versus the dozens of unadorned listings that will pop up alongside yours.

Stay current

Claiming your space and keeping information current is a pretty easy process, composed of steps that are user friendly — and it’s free. Sure, it takes time, but once your space is claimed, a Web-savvy staff member can be assigned the responsibility of keeping it current — as long as management lets her know when updates are needed, for example, when a young physician in the practice passes his boards. With more people turning to the Internet to find and research professionals, claiming your space and increasing your Web presence have become powerful marketing tools.

Keep in mind that everyone is talking to everyone on the Internet, and more patients are scoring their physicians on these rating sites. For this reason, we suggest you check out your ratings on these sites from time to time. It can provide a telling barometer on your patients’ opinions of the service they receive, and the over-all patient experience in your practice. If the marks are low, take them seriously, and bring in a consultant to help improve your customer service and make your practice the very best it can be.

Atlanta based medical software distributor, MediPro, Inc. showcased their award-winning software solutions for the ninth year in a row at the Georgia Podiatric Medical Association’s (GPMA) sixteenth annual Georgia Summit.

The GPMA Summit was held at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead Hotel in Atlanta, Ga. on Feb. 21-24. MediPro has spent nearly a decade participating at this event as a premier vendor. This year’s summit hosted more than 200 providers and approximately 60 assistants. Those that had the opportunity to visit MediPro’s booth spoke with their national sales representatives and viewed live software demonstrations. GPMA attendees were able to see a myriad of software solutions including SuiteMed IMS, Lytec MD and CareCloud practice management (PM)/electronic health record (EHR) suites.

“It was a pleasure seeing some new and very familiar faces in our MediPro booth this year,” said MediPro National Sales Manager, Erika Gilbert. “Having the opportunity to spend time with several podiatrists who were unhappy with their current medical software products was a truly eye opening experience. I was pleased to see how receptive so many providers were to our delivery of MediPro’s mission in providing the ultimate level of satisfaction, the highest level of service and working hard to build a long-lasting vendor/practice relationship.”

MediPro plans to attend next year’s GPMA Summit in Georgia and present even more dynamic medical software solutions. In the meantime, please call MediPro at 800-759-1321 x2 for more information on any of the software showcased at the summit.

About MediPro, Inc.
MediPro, Inc. is a medical billing software company offering practice management systems and electronic health record solutions. MediPro’s mission is to deliver and support integrated solutions to the healthcare community. MediPro recognizes the need for a comprehensive, interactive and cost-effective suite of applications that are customized to address the specific needs of healthcare offices.

About Georgia Podiatric Medical Association
Incorporated in 1933 for the purpose of providing social interaction and education for its members while safeguarding the foot, ankle and leg health of all Georgians, GPMA is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit, voluntary professional association. GPMA serves as a valuable resource for podiatric consumer information, the importance of good foot health and the availability of quality podiatric care.