Teamwork gives your practice a competitive advantage over other practices, says Patrick Lencioni, founder and president of The Table Group, Inc., a management-consulting firm in Emeryville, CA. Lencioni recently spoke on the importance of teamwork during the Medical Group Management Association's annual meeting in Philadelphia in October 2003.

Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) 2004 includes 550 changes covering 135 new codes, 81 revised codes, 48 deleted codes, and removal of the starred designation from 225 codes. However, not all of these changes affect you. Understanding which changes apply to your practice may take a while, but it will save you timeand frustrationin the long run.

Contracts between a medical provider and a managed care organization (MCO) dissolve when a provider no longer wishes to work with an MCO and serves notice of its intention to terminate the contract or vice versa. If you face contract termination, whether by your own decision or that of the MCO, research, plan ahead, and take appropriate action to protect your practice.

First in a two-part seriesFor a happier, more efficient office, follow these tips from author Jack Singer, PhD, president and chief executive officer of Psychologically Speaking:•Communicate with your employees. If you sense an attitude problem among your staff, don’t let it lie dormant. Have open meetings where people feel safe airing their concerns.“And by safe, I mean absolutely no repercussions if anything is said,” says Singer. “If people feel that it is safe to talk about their problems, you will be able to deal with them more easily and more quickl

New CPT codes, instructions for your physicians and billersOne of the significant differences in this year’s new codes is the instructions on how to measure for lesion excisions, explains Susan Callaway, CPC, CCS-P, of North Augusta, SC. “Lesion excisions are performed by lots of different specialties, so this is a wide-reaching change.”In the past, when a lesion was excised from the body, the physician had to code the procedure based on the lesion’s size. Now, the code is based on the margin around the lesion. So, instead of delegating the job of measuring the

Picture this: You’re looking through the morning’s mail and, to your surprise, a patient has filed a malpractice claim against you. You run to the patient’s folder and look through her chart to see what the problem is. And that’s when you remember it. You forgot to write down some information in the chart. The information could be critical to your case. Don’t even think about fixing the record, because it’s already too late to add anything, says James W. Saxton, Esq., chair of the Healthcare Litigation Group of the law firm of Stevens and Lee in Lanc

NEVER SKIMP ON STAFF

Different payers...different rulesYou’ve seen one Medicare carrier...you’ve seen one Medicare carrier. Everyone has to make up their own rules. If you’ve worked in a medical office for even a short amount of time, you’ve probably heard one of these statements or some semblance thereof. To further complicate matters, although the American Medical Association (AMA) works hard each year to keep the CPT manual up-to-date, many carriers:1. Don’t update their fee schedules.2. Require HCPCS rather than the standard code.3. Require that you use a combination of

TWO BILLS IN CONGRESS LOBBY FOR FAIR PAY FOR DOCSIf your eyes bulged out when you received your 2002 Medicare Fee Schedule, you may want to let your Congressional representatives know how you feel. While every doctor is smarting from the 5.4% reduction represented by the conversion factor, heart, vascular, and general surgeons are especially badly hit. With an average drop of 9%-15%, cardiac surgeons will see as much as a 22% payment reduction from Medicare on some services. Vascular surgeons are not far behind. Index codes such as coronary artery bypass grafting (33510-33535), c