Books

Noteworthy Features for the Third Edition:

• Expands the content well beyond just “RVUs” to consider other key considerations in the healthcare environment.
• Takes into consideration hot topics in the current market, such as MACRA and MIPS.
• Specific content is included that is focused on the current value-based environment.
• Updates RVU-based content to current market practices.
• Includes a specific chapter focused on technology, securing the right technology to attain necessary data to provide to the right people at the right time.
• Includes a specific chapter on the care coordination process.
• Specifically considers practice management in the current healthcare environment, balancing fee-for-service and fee-for-value.
• Practical —includes examples of how different real-world medical practices are using RVUs to cut costs, enhance efficiency, boost profitability, and assure quality of care.

 

The current era of healthcare alignment among physicians, hospitals, and outside independent investors has been underway for 10-15 years. Given this, many of the original contracts that formed the basis of these arrangements have (or will soon) expire. Thus, we refer to these new deals as “second generation” transactions.

As the system moves toward a more value-based, fee-for-value reimbursement environment, newer alignment vehicles, such as accountable care organizations (ACOs), clinically integrated networks (CINs), and patient-centered medical homes (PCMH) are beginning to take shape. More physician compensation models now include at least partial incentives for performance, as measured by such matters as specialty-specific quality metrics, cost efficiency metrics, meaningful use of electronic health records, and other parameters.

Physician-Hospital Alignment and Compensation Models: The Second Generation is written by experts from Coker Group — a leading healthcare consulting firm recognized for their expertise in physician alignment and compensation. Starting with a review of “First Generation” physician compensation models, the authors then detail components of “Second Generation” models including:

• How Value-Based Reimbursements of the future call for adjustments to the Volume-Based incentives of the past.
• How to engage physicians in alignment initiatives that are favorable to both parties.
• How to approach the imperative today of improved quality of care coupled with decreased costs of care.
• How to be profitable in a demanding, competitive, and highly-regulated environment.

The Handbook for Credentialing Healthcare Providers enables your organization to systemize the tedious, ongoing, and mandatory process of credentialing your medical staff – and to understand why you must!

Healthcare organizations lose substantial revenue when providers on their medical staff are not properly credentialed. Payers have unique requirements for providers to satisfy before they will pay for services. Hospitals often face difficulty in getting the information from the provider and are challenged by a lack of systems for initial and ongoing verification and documentation.

Administrators must weigh the cost benefits of in-house or outsourced credentialing and evaluate the options for software and other tools. Readers who use this handbook will feel confident and secure in their knowledge.

Written by Ellis “Mac” Knight, MD, former Senior Vice President/CMO of Coker Group, The Definitive Guide to Population Health Management is a strategic how-to manual for the thousands of healthcare providers who, like many who have recently organized into clinically integrated organizations such as ACOs or CINs, are asking, “What now?” This essential PHM guide:

• Defines the roles and motivations of PHM players, including government and commercial payers, self-insured employers, and clinically integrated providers of all stripes
• Provides tactics for marketing the transition to PHM to reluctant providers, convincing them to revamp long-standing practice behaviors and drive the care model toward higher value
• Details how to define and stratify populations for allocation of resources, including transitional care management, health and wellness services, and retail medicine
• Discusses the factors in determining the best path to value-based reimbursement models, including arguments for transitional hybrid models
• Explains the important infrastructure technologies and steps to building a PHM-ready IT department
• Identifies critical factors in successful patient engagement and outreach

With pressures mounting to succeed in physician alignment projects, there is confusion about alignment alternatives, expense of investment involved, and understanding of accountable care era payment systems.

Physician Alignment: Ensuring Success with Negotiations, Payment Systems, and Education of Stakeholders, a new book by the experts at Coker Group, will help you evaluate and assess options, identify critical success factors in thriving alignment models, and help you with strategies for improving an existing relationship, salvaging a struggling relationship, or terminating a failing relationship.

With Physician Alignment: Ensuring Success with Negotiations, Payment Systems, and Education of Stakeholders, you’ll gain a level of comfort with strategies and negotiations as you work on your physician alignment projects.

The Healthcare Executive’s Guide to ACO Strategy, Second Edition, provides healthcare leaders with new strategies and tools to implement and manage accountable care organizations (ACO). Based on the experiences of organizations that have started down the path of ACO development, the authors discuss what has and hasn’t worked and share new strategies for organizations grappling with managing an ACO.
Wherever an organization is on the timeline for structuring its alliances and addressing evolving reimbursement issues in the accountable care era, this book delivers valuable information to help healthcare executives meet their pending challenges.

Update your practice’s policies and procedures with this useful new guide

Everything you need to know about writing, creating, and updating your medical practice’s policies and procedures is available in the new AMA book, Policies and Procedures for a Successful Medical Practice by Kay Stanley.

Greenbranch Publishing announces the Second Edition of RVUs at Work: Relative Value Units in the Medical Practice, a practical print (and ebook) by Coker Group’s Max Reiboldt and Justin Chamblee that gives medical practices breakthrough control over costs, compensation, productivity, managed-care contract negotiations in light of new accountable care scenarios.

With millions of dollars riding on a hospital’s quality and patient satisfaction scores, hospitals and physicians need to work together to succeed.  But how best to align?  The Healthcare Executive’s Guide to Physician-Hospital Alignment is an essential resource to develop your own roadmap, overcome common roadblocks, and choose the right alignment model and strategies for each service line. This comprehensive look at the drivers of physician-hospital alignment will help you and your organization:

Now, in the book RVUs at Work: Relative Value Units in the Medical Practice, experts from Coker Group give practice administrators and physicians step-by-step guidance on how to use RVUs to gain profitable new control over physician productivity, costs and expenses, operating margins, resource allocation, compensation and even managed-care contract negotiations.

The Healthcare Executive’s Guide to ACO Strategy is the first comprehensive book dissecting the integral components of ACOs from physician, provider, and payer views, including analysis of the CMS final regulations.

In the wake of healthcare reform, ACOs continue to emerge as the care delivery and reimbursement model of the future. Get the book that provides specifics on incorporating accountable care structure and strategy into your organization so you can enter the ACO era prepared and positioned to succeed.

Whether establishing a solo practice, joining a group, or purchasing an existing practice, this comprehensive resource from the American Medical Association (AMA) provides in-depth information on the fundamentals of strategic practice management and future planning for the medical practice.

Contemplating selling or closing your medical practice?  Would you like to know the value of your practice in order to assess your market position?  Valuing, Selling, and Closing the Medical Practice helps you appraise the value of your practice while broadening your knowledge of the most appropriate models and methods to use in the dissolution of your business.

Regardless of where you are in your journey on the road to EHR, the Complete Guide and Toolkit to Successful EHR Adoption will walk you through the process in a practical, easy-to-follow way, with proven strategies to ensure success. An EHR transformation will touch virtually every aspect of your practice and bring about an entirely new way of thinking and doing business. The benefits far outweigh the cost of doing nothing, which includes the risk of becoming technologically isolated from consumers, payers, and others in the health care community. While no system is perfect, and no time will ever be the perfect time to adopt EHR, most agree that health care must be automated to meet future challenges.

An invaluable tool designed for successful financial management and planning in the medical practice, Financial Management of the Medical Practice, third edition, simplifies the financial planning process while establishing a foundation for making informed decisions in developing and maintaining financial systems to ensure a profitable practice.