Growth Strategies with Physician Practice Group Aggregation  

Expanding a practice or MSO through Practice Group Aggregation can present a variety of revenue management obstacles that need to be planned for. One of the more challenging adjustments is when the newly acquired group is required to change its Practice Management (PM) system. This major disruption to their operation can significantly delay claims going out, reducing cash flow, and creating a backlog of patient accounting work to be completed. 

Minimizing Disruption to Cash Flow

Depending on the details of the transaction, changes affecting the medical and operations teams of a newly acquired  group can vary greatly. Some acquisitions allow for practice group autonomy and a more long-term strategy with implementing major changes. Others take a different approach, requiring the use of corporate-wide platforms as early as possible. With the later, staff will spend a lot of time in training and learning a new electronic medical records (EMR) system, scheduling, coding, claims submission, billing, and collections applications. When charges aren’t being entered and ERAs aren’t getting processed, revenue is bound to fall short of projections.

Strategic Migration and Cultural Alignment

If you’re looking to avoid cash flow issues, leaving the current PM system in place may be the best option. This would allow more time for a more strategic migration to take place when all of the staff, including medical and operations teams, are more acclimated to being part of the larger organization. This delay in changing systems would also help to ensure cultural alignment, and a more positive experience with staff, as employee retention issues have become more of an issue in recent years. While there is the need for combined financial reporting to a single Tax ID/EIN, this can seamlessly be accomplished with the right technology and revenue cycle outsourcing partner. 

Utilizing a Single Cash Management System and Future Acquisitions

ReMedics works with Physician Practice Groups, MSOs and DSO clients to facilitate multi-group remittance processing with a Single Cash Management System. We start by streamlining the capture, data validation and reconciliation of co-mingled payments from multiple Practice Management Systems and multiple Clearinghouses — with workflow automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and integrated document management technology. All funds received are reconciled and distributed to the appropriate accounts for each business unit. 

Once our services are in place, adding a new group (or multiple groups) with future acquisitions becomes a much simpler process. With near seamless integration to the new PM system(s) and Clearinghouse(s), cash flow disruption is minimized — and permanent revenue cycle gains are realized as a result of our extensive validation editing technology and centralized revenue cycle reporting & analytics. 

If these services are of interest to your organization, Contact Us online — or call 440-671-7700 to schedule an online presentation.

Download our brochure Achieving Success with Practice Group Aggregation.