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The Trump Healthcare Market
What a more capitalist approach to payment reform could uncover in the new administrationThe healthcare industry is facing a new kind of unknown with the incoming Trump administration. As...
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Quality Where it Counts -- Focusing on Care & Patient Satisfaction
The amount of change hitting the healthcare industry is enough to make any provider dizzy. For primary care providers especially, implementing and optimizing new workflows and technology to capture...
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Hitting the Trails: Take a guide on your value-based care journey
The healthcare payment landscape seems to change every week. Developing a strategy for success is nearly as tough as assessing what alternative payment model (APM) programs you should pursue. Is there...
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Physicians: Increase Patient Loyalty by Improving Customer Service
5 Quick Tips for Your PracticeConsumers are taking a more proactive role today in choosing their healthcare providers. These decisions often have little to do with medical care, but result from...
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The Rise of the Narrow Network
Despite helping reduce costs, are narrow networks the true way of the future?It's time for a change. As limited provider choice in exchanges rises, and the need to track quality across the patient’s...
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New Medicare reporting requirements: MACRA, MIPS & APMs Key Dates & Deadlines
As many physicians are aware, major changes are underway in how Medicare will reimburse them. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is phasing in new reporting requirements focusing on...
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Telehealth: the best idea that may never happen
Telehealth is the wave of the future for PHM and VBC—but who’s going to pay?When it comes to defining the factors that will have the biggest impact on the future of healthcare in the United States,...
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Independence vs. Employment for Physicians
Is employment really the answer?Hospital employment, with its promises of financial security, fewer administrative duties, and more stable working hours offer a strong case for physicians. From 2007...
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Connected Care: How the 'Internet of Things' will Advance Healthcare
5 Key Points Physicians Should KnowIn today’s digital world, we have smartphones, smart homes -- and increasingly we will have smart healthcare. From pills to pacemakers, a growing number of medical...
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Primary Care Providers Can Lower the Cost of Healthcare
Today’s patients have numerous choices of hospitals, urgent care, and other ambulatory care centers when they seek treatment. While primary care providers (PCPs) can typically help patients with these...
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Benefits to Optimizing Your Electronic Health Record (EHR)
A “necessary evil” is defined as something unpleasant that must be accepted in order to achieve a particular result. In healthcare, many would assign a similar definition to “Electronic Health Record.”...
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RCM Key Performance Indicators
With the right practice management tools, there is no limit to the data your practice can track and measure. Many of the key performance indicators (KPIs) practices should actively manage relate...
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Staying Healthy at Work
The average person spends approximately 90,000 hours at work over the course of their lifetime. If you are an employee, you know that what you do during those hours can have a profound impact on your...
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Continuum Service Spotlight: Payer Relations
Most physicians expect to receive the maximum reimbursement from payers for services rendered. Yet, many physicians are reimbursed at lower rates or are not fully reimbursed according to agreement...
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High Risk vs. Rising Risk Patients: Knowing the Difference Could Save Your...
It is well documented that 5% of the population account for 50% of healthcare spend.1 Provider organizations, such as ACOs, often focus expensive complex care management resources on this patient...
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Patient Satisfaction Begins with Good Manners
Patient satisfaction is becoming a key phrase in healthcare, and physicians are learning first-hand just how important it is to make their patients not only healthy, but also happy. The patient...
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Is Your Practice Ready for CMS Reimbursement Changes?
Changes to Medicare will soon have a major impact on physicians’ bottom lines.The Centers for Medicare and MedicaidServices (CMS) is fast-tracking its shift to value-based payments, with the...
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Understanding Quality Metrics Under New CMS Reimbursement Models
As our healthcare system shifts from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursement, physicians face increasing requirements to report on the quality of the care they provide.The Centers for Medicare and...
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Managing Patients' Cost of Care Essential Under New Reimbursement Models
Quality. Cost. Patient Satisfaction.There are the three main areas in which physicians will be measured, as our healthcare system shifts from volume to value. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid...
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Tips to Maximize ICD-10 Coding Reimbursements
ICD-10: three letters and two numbers that caused much anxiety and stress for the medical community. Continuum’s coding team effectively prepared its clients for a smooth...
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Patient Satisfaction: A Key to Success in the New Healthcare Landscape
Physicians face increasing requirements from payers to provide “value” – high quality care at a low overall cost however, an important aspect of value that’s often overlooked is patient satisfaction....
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Know Thy Patient: The Importance of Accurate Patient Attribution
As healthcare payment and delivery models continue to evolve, providers are increasingly being held more accountable for the health, quality of care, and overall costs associated with their patient...
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Alternative Payment Models (APMs) Preview
As healthcare shifts from a fee-for-service to a value-based system, Medicare is making sweeping changes to how it reimburses physicians. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has...
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Understanding Alternative Payment Models' (APMs) Impact on a Practice
As healthcare shifts from a fee-for-service to a value-based system, Medicare is making sweeping changes to how it reimburses physicians. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has...
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Five ways to balance the cost side of the VBM equation
Continuum’s recent white paper, “How Physicians Can Win in the New Healthcare Environment,” explored several key strategies on how to transform the physician practice to capitalize on healthcare reform...
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Medicare Quality Data: Who Must Report?
Starting next year, most doctors will be required to report quality data under Medicare’s new Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). MIPS will apply to other clinicians, too, such as physician...
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Do you have what it takes to thrive as an independent physician?
Fortune favors the boldThe primary care market is shifting. Shifting regulations and evolving payment models are shaking the foundations of traditional independent primary care practices—and these...
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Can a hospital build a sustainable, high-performing physician organization?
Last week, I was at yet another healthcare industry forum focused on value-based care. The sessions were decent, but I zeroed in on one session. Pairing a health plan executive and a physician leader –...
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Effective financial incentives drive value-based care (VBC) adoption
For years, providers and payers have been at odds with each other. Arguments about reimbursement rates, network inclusion, and claims management created relationships that were, at best, adversarial....
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The medical home model: What physicians need to know
The concept of a “medical home” has evolved over the years, starting in the 1960s as the center of medical records for a child with special healthcare needs. Today, that definition is greatly expanded:...
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What's the better innovation investment—process or technology?
In our recent white paper, “Industrial Strength,” I mention one of the most interesting and powerful players in the global healthcare landscape, Devi Shetty. In that white paper, we examine the causes...
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MACRA Final Rule: 4 Key Changes
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released its final rule for sweeping reimbursement regulations that start on Jan. 1, 2017.Known as MACRA (the Medicare Access and CHIP...
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Straight to the top: The right kind of “top of credentials”
One of the key requirements of VBC success—and one of the components of Industrial Strength medical practices—is the notion of all organizational staff working at the “top of credentials.” The most...
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Five Essential Population Health Management Tips
Success in VBC initiatives depends on smart pop health strategiesPopulation Health Management (PHM) is the buzzword of the moment when it comes to success in value-based care initiatives. There’s a...
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The Telemedicine Battle: when will the benefits outweigh the challenges?
Though telemedicine has been a segment of the healthcare industry for years, the use of telehealth technology has not expanded to meet its full potential. Telemedicine still has a few challenges to...
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It's All About The Doctors
I recently attended a great health care industry “futures” conference, a chance to get the pulse of the industry through discussion with key thought leaders. Despite all the noise around ACA, “repeal...
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What Could Medicare Do To Drive Change
There’s been a lot of discussion about reforming our health care system over many generations and presidential administrations, and most recently in the run-up to and immediate period after the...
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Health Care's Future IT Value Proposition
McKinsey & Company recently published the results and analysis of a global survey on IT’s future value proposition. While many expect IT, and CIOs for that matter, to play a growing role in...
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Can the Patient Centered Medical Home Be Saved?
Yes – but only if insurers do their part.Thousands of primary care providers transformed their practices to patient-centered medical homes in preparation for performance-based payment models. No doubt...
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Capitalize on Claims Data to Benefit Your Practice
Despite the past year of uncertainty surrounding healthcare policy, one objective has remained consistent. As payment models shift from fee-for-service to value based care, physicians are more...
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10 Trends Physicians Must Anticipate in 2018
2018 is expected to be another tumultuous year for the healthcare industry, even though industry growth is projected to remain mostly stable.1 With the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s...
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Improve Revenue Cycle Streams in the Age of High-Deductible Plans
The number of High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) and Consumer-Directed Health Plans (CDHPs) in the market continues to increase as patients and employers look for lower monthly premiums and payers...
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The Transformed Practice: Coordinating the Continuum of Care
Practice transformation is an ongoing process of developing a practice into a Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH)—a theoretical model of primary care delivery that is coordinated, team-based, and...
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Medicare Advantage Star Rating & the Provider: Rewarding, Complex & Competitive
CMS created the Star Ratings system in 2008 to help seniors compare quality and performance among Medicare Advantage (MA) Part C plans and Part D prescription drug plans (PDPs). Insurance companies...
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Treating Physician Burnout
With the growing complexity of the healthcare industry, practicing physicians are seeing an unavoidable rise in required reporting and administrative tasks. At the same time, the increasing financial...
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The Provider's Role in Risk Coding
Physicians must code diagnoses properly to succeed under Medicare Advantage & other value-based contracts Each year, CMS sets cost benchmarks for every Medicare Advantage member, based on the...
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Top 10 Steps for Proper Succession Planning
Retirement may be years away, but as an independent physician, there are many succession-related issues that need your consideration—and they shouldn’t be put on the back burner.First, who will be your...
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5 Traits of Successful Physician Leaders
Delegation Effectively managing a team involves properly delegating tasks, since no one has the knowledge and expertise to manage everything on their own. Create an atmosphere of problem-solving, and...
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Is it time to take on a Nurse Practitioner?
Greater access to quality care and lower costs are strong incentivesAccording to a recent report by the Association of Medical Colleges, we are in the calm before the proverbial storm relating to...
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9 Key Trends for Independent Physician Practices in 2019
It will come as no surprise that in 2019, healthcare costs will continue to rise. At a projected 6 percent increase, this is consistent with the past five years, but it’s still an unsustainable trend...
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