Marketing Physical Therapy

Your therapy newsletter, therapy brochures, physical therapy website and other promotions have to attract patients to your practice. Keeping in touch with your past patients is key, yet most physical therapy practices don’t even do physical therapy marketing to their past patients.  How these materials look, feel and communicate will determine how many new patients are attracted to your physical therapy marketing. Be known for being the experts in town that help patients overcome pain and restore their function.  However, these are the people who know you and will refer to you the most, as well as return for care when needed. In fact, most offices should be seeing 40% or more past patients back for needed care.

Physical therapy practices also need to develop professional relationships with local physicians to develop referrals to the practice. This generates more new patients coming into the practice and a building of the patient base. What promotions you leave behind or send out are a direct reflection of your practice. Show your expertise with a professional and customized, therapy newsletter, physician handouts, therapy brochures, physical therapy websites and more. Marketing physical therapy to physicians has to be ferocious as they are very busy people and are bombarded all day long from many other practices and vendors. You have to market frequently and invest a lot into it. However, with the right physical therapy marketing, you will win. This is where the PMIS Marketing Module can really help you shine. It lets you use the data you already have in your system to easily market to your patients and referring physicians. 

Take a look: Marketing Demo

ICD-10 Transition Date ?

The move to ICD-10 may be delayed again.  What should the small practice do? 
You should move forward with your implementation and make sure your system allows for dual coding.  Dual coding will allow you to code for ICD-10 and still submit ICD-9 codes.  This will make the transition easier, you will begin to learn the new codes and be ready for the actual transition to ICD-10.

Please see the information on the proposed delay of implementation of ICD-10.
http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/article/breaking-icd-10-delay-sgr-temporary-fix-vote

Staying in Touch 

Are you spending too much time trying to reach your patients?
Text Messaging and Email can save you time and money.  Your patients will also prefer getting notices without spending time on the phone.  Have you noticed that most people are talking a lot less on their cell phones?  Integrated text and email messaging from your practice management or scheduler can really save you and your patients a lot of time.  You can look forward to decreased cancellations and no shows.  Make sure you are making the technology work for you! 

Working in the Cloud

Access from Anywhere

Cloud computing its all the rage.  What does it mean to you ?

* Accessing your programs and data anywhere you have internet connectivity.
* Automatic backing of data.
* Server maintenance and upgrades without your own IT staff.
* Software is usually part of the service.
* Running your programs from multiple connected platforms (Apple macs, Ipads, PC's, and smartphones)

Accessing your system in the cloud offers many advantages, your upfront cost are lower and your desktop to run the applications is built upon data center class hardware and software.
We have partnered with ICC Global to give our clients the best cloud experience.

ICC Global Hosting

For physical therapist looking for software that allows easy access and low cost cloud computing may be for you.

Reduce Claim Denials

You can lower your accounts receivable days, and stress by getting your claims right the first time.

How do you do that?

A.    Check denials for common errors

B.     Identify where these errors are created

C.     Share this information with the staff responsible for these areas

For example, if there is a trend in denials for patient eligibility, have the staff that registers patients verify insurance eligibility or put a check in place to make sure this is done before billing.  Many practices verify benefits on-line, or via phone before the patient is seen. This saves everyone time and lets the patient know what to expect.  

Check to see if your clearinghouse offers online verification, or if the larger insurance companies you bill offer web access to eligibility and benefits.

Physical Therapy Software Practice Management

Is your practice running as smoothly as it should?  I have seen practices that are running like tops, and others that make me wonder how they are doing it.  There are some basic questions you should be asking at the end of each day, week, month?  Today we will touch on the daily questions.
Daily
      1)  Did all of my notes get done today?
      2)  Did I post charges for all of the patients seen today?
      3)  Unexpected walk-ins were they added to the schedule?
      4)  Are we collecting the co-pays we should?
      5)  Are my patients happy with the therapy they received?
      6)  Are we using our system the best way we can?
      7)  Is my data getting backed up - If your running your suite in the cloud this is not your problem.

How to manage these questions?
     1)  If your notes are computerized compare the list of notes against todays schedule,
          or run an audit if you have one that will automatically compare them
      2) Same kind of audit as above.
      3) Your audit with the schedule doesn't work if you don't enter everyone
           that walks in in the schedule.
      4) A larger part of your fee's are being transferred to the patient's co-pay.
          The patient's are expecting you to collect it, but are waiting to be asked for it.
      5) Sometimes the office staff can find this out better than the therapist.
           Have them ask.  Your front desk is a huge resource for the practice.
      6) There is usually some part of the system that you might not know about that can
           save you time, check the vendors web page for new info.
      7) If you have your own server / network.  Make sure you check the backup log to
          see that it is backing up.  Also once a month see if you can actually restore
          at least a small amount of data from it.