“The biggest mistake that many practitioners make is thinking that negotiating is a waste of time,” according to an article in Medical Economics.
 
Here are a couple of the crucial strategies you’d be wise to follow in any negotiation:
  • Quantify your relationship with all your payers. This can be as simple as making a spreadsheet with your top eight payers and top 25 CPT codes to look at the dollar value of each relationship, suggests Reed Tinsley, CPA and consultant, in the Medical Economics article.
  • Know your local market data. If you’re a small practice, how many others of the same specialty are in the neighborhood? How many patients do they have, roughly, compared to you? What are their charges for services? This last point can help give you a relative idea of their overall revenue picture compared to yours.
Right tool for the job: You could do a spreadsheet, or you could use a web-based tool called FeeCalc that can create fee schedules in minutes, based on the latest Medicare fees. FeeCalc also lets you search for charges in dollars for your local ZIP area, by CPT or HCPCS code. Learn why these tools are helping providers level the playing field against payers in this free webinar, set for Tuesday, Sept. 17. Register for FREE here!