On this episode, I sit down with Teri Thurston, PECAA's Billing & Coding Advisor to discuss the biggest issues practices face with their billing and coding processes and how to fix them. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Start at the beginning - with insurance verification. Verifying the patient's insurance ahead of time informs the practice on how to best care for the patient and leverage those benefits before the patient steps foot in the practice. 
2. Evaluate the entire Revenue Cycle Management process. Determine the areas that need work and define those individual steps and processes in specific detail. Make sure they work for your individual business. These established processes also help when you have to replace or fill in for your billing specialist.
3. Under-coding and over-coding are significant problems. Take the time to learn what you can bill, how to determine the exam levels you provide, and the appropriate documentation. Don't miss out on billing for services you provided as they are also risky in an audit. Knowing the rules helps you sleep at night when it comes to an audit. 
4. Medical and vision insurance can cause challenges when the patient presents for a vision exam, yet has a medical problem. Leverage both within the rules and keep medical and vision separate when appropriate. Educate your patients up front and throughout their entire experience with the whole team.
5. Don't forget the processes after the patient is seen. Submit claims on time. Chase down denials and rejections as soon as possible. Track and manage your billing and coding KPI's. 

What Teri is reading:

• Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown

Do you want to build a great referral network with providers in your area to drive greater specialty care adoption and expand your patient base? 

Key Takeaways:

1. Evaluate the current realities of your referral networks
2. Determine the referrals you want and establish your referral policies and procedures
3. Reach out yourself to the providers in your area as much as you can
4. Don't be afraid to refer and seek referrals from other optometrists
5. Leave detailed information for the providers you're working to build referrals from
6. Send detailed communication to providers you both receive referrals from and from whom you are seeking referrals
7. Host doctor education nights to showcase what how you can serve their practices and their patient

Have you registered for the PECAA Annual Meeting?

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Sahil Dosaj, owner of Miller Optometry in Yucaipa, CA, to share his experience in buying another practice to scale his business. 

Key Takeaways:

1. The opportunity to scale can come along at any time. Be prepared and ready in your current practice location(s) to be able to say yes when the opportunity presents. 
2. Buying a practice means acquiring an established brand that has the opportunity to grow. It's important to recognize the value of the brand (good or bad) and leverage it or change it appropriately. 
3. Success in acquisition means having standardized processes strong enough that you implement them in the second business. Take into account what that location does well, but replicate the processes you have established. Be flexible enough to evolve and grow but replicate at the same time. 
4. Replication also involves the culture. Acquiring a business can mean acquiring great people and other times, it means people who won't get on board with the direction you're headed. Don't be afraid to let people go who aren't aligned with your mission, vision, and values.

What Sahil is reading:

• The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack
• Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty

Are you joining us for the PECAA Annual Meeting 4/20 to 4/22 in Nashville, TN?? If you don't want to miss out, learn more at https://www.pecaa.com/nationalmemberevents.

On this episode, we sit down with principal financial advisor and co-founder of Credentialed Wealth Advisors Clint Chedester to discuss the realities of today's economy and its impact on independent eye care professionals. 

Clint's Disclosure:

“We represent Credentialed Wealth Advisors, an SEC registered investment adviser.  The opinions expressed are solely our opinions and are not necessarily those of the podcast host or any advertisers or of Credentialed Wealth Advisors, LLC.  Our appearance does not constitute an offer to buy or sell securities and no investment process is free of risk.  No investment process we may discuss can be guaranteed to be profitable.  The investment opportunities discussed may not be suitable for all investors.  All data and references we cite are believed to be reliable.  Any opinions, news, research, analysis or prices discussed are general commentary and do not constitute investment advice.  Our comments cannot be construed as tax or legal advice.  Listeners are urged to contact their tax or legal advisor for any related questions.”

Key Takeaways:

1. One key economic metric to understand the health of the US consumer is the S&P Experian Consumer Credit Default Composite Index - the percentage of consumers behind or in default of consumer credit. Today it is 0.63% compared to over 5% at the height of the Great Recession in 2009.
2. Interest rates continue to rise to increase the cost of borrowing money, ultimately leading to lowered inflation. As small business owners, high interest rates indicate a much deeper need to be especially strategic about how new purchases will be used to drive growth in revenue. If cash flow is high, retaining cash in the business is valuable.
3. The US economy has been in decline for much of 2022 and a number of leading economic indicators show this. A few of these: the number of manufacturing hours worked, ISM Index of new orders, and consumer expectations. All are down and interestingly, the consumer expectation index as lower last year than at the worst part of the Great Recession. Consumer expectation is improving.
4. The US Labor Force Participation Rate indicator shows that we still have not replaced the jobs lost during the pandemic. Consumer demand is higher than it was prior to the pandemic with less workers in the labor force.

What Clint is reading:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

Want to recession proof your practice? Join PECAA at www.pecaamax.com!

In this episode, I sit down with PECAA's Optical Business Advisor, Kayla Groves, to discuss the biggest pitfalls that practices fall into with their optical. 

Key Takeaways

1. Pitfall #1: Overstocking of frames. Turn rate should be 3x on average in a practice. Frames that aren't turning at this rate shouldn't be stocked.
2. Pitfall #2: Capture rate isn't calculated or calculated poorly. Not having this data affects ability to make key decisions well within the optical.
3. Pitfall #3: Not maximizing reimbursement from insurance by taking wholesale and Frames Data and taking into consideration the type of optical they have: heavy managed vision care, budget, or luxury. 
4. Pitfall #4: Not actively managing the frame board and inventory, taking into consideration the practice goals, the practice business model, demographics, price assortment, and turn rate.
5. Pitfall #5: Not training all team members on the essentials of the optical.
6. Optical is still a significant opportunity for growth in private practice. The patients purchasing online and from e-commerce players are not ones who would purchase anyways from a practice. A large proportion of patients still want an in office experience.

What Kayla is reading:

• The Missing by Kiersten Modglin

Want to learn more about PECAA's Optical Management resources? Email us at [email protected].

On this episode of the Practice Advantage podcast, I sit down with Kathy Long, PECAA's Business Operations Advisor to discuss the importance of taking time to review your standard practice operations and find ways to make them more efficient and more effective. 

Key Takeaways

1. Leverage your office manager. If your practice doesn’t have one, consider team leads to drive change.
2. It’s important to get started. Take some time away from patient care, pick one specific process to evaluate, determine your metrics, ask the right questions, involve the team, and most importantly, get started.
3. Consider the most important processes like recall, optical capture, doctor hand-off, and marketing – ones that have significant revenue impact for the practice.
4. Focus on the customer journey and map that journey. The mapping exercise helps lay out the process operations that you can focus on and improve.

What Kathy is reading:

• Stop Overthinking by Nick Trenton

On this episode, we sit down with the masterminds behind midbrain, Randy Bunka and Saul Alvarez, to discuss the tools that big box stores and e-commerce platforms and how independent eye care professionals can take advantage of them to drive new patients into their practice. 

Key Takeaways

1. The average practice loses at least 10% of their patients each year. Marketing to new patients in new markets is critical just to stay flat as a business, much less grow.
2. The big players are leveraging big data and AI, based around who the patient is, what they're looking at, when they're looking at it, to market to new potential patients successfully.
3. Re-marketing is incredibly effective. We don't always know when the consumer is in the awareness phase of the customer journey. Re-marketing keeps your product and service front and center so they know where to turn when they're ready to purchase. 
4. The most effective marketing is targeted - towards multiple categories of patients, but individuals who are most likely to access your services. 
5. PECAA Ads allows independent practices to leverage the big data and AI to drive re-marketing display ads to new patients in your community. Learn more today!

What Saul is reading:

• Drive by Daniel Pink

In this episode, we talk with PECAA's incoming President, Jonathan Worrall to discuss the power of emotional intelligence as a skill all leaders should possess. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Great leaders are curious. They listen more, ask more questions, and rely on input and feedback from those closest to the work. 
2. Emotional Intelligence is recognizing the entire person on the team and the thoughts and feelings they bring to their work. 
3. An EQ driven leader is self-aware of their own emotions, thoughts, and biases.
4. Creating an EQ driven workplace and leading with empathy does not absolve people of responsibilities to perform. Performance goes hand in hand with a great workplace. 
5. An EQ driven leader invests in their team's success, both professionally and personally. 

What Jonathan is reading:

• Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Davis Capaccioli, owner and founder of Peak Eyecare to discuss the culture strategies helping him build his one-year old Cold Start practice. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Davis's One-Year Cold Start Lessons learned:
   1. Make yourself available to patients to grow your practice. Efficient and optimized is great but not at the expense of being available for new patients.
   2. Patients will pay more for higher quality products especially with a story
   3. Don't burn out team members all for the sake of being lean and mean
2. Culture matters because the amount of time the patient spends with the doctor is less than they spend with the rest of the team.
3. Emphasizing core values, daily reminding of core values, celebrating living out the core values and encouraging them members to call out others helps drive a strong and great culture.
4. Every team meeting includes a “Values Moment” in which the owner and team members highlight others for living out the core values with a patient in the last month.

What Davis is reading:

• Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Pat Lencioni
• Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 by Jim Collins

On this episode, I sit down with PECAA executives Dr. Lance Anderson and Jamie Hughes to discuss the key principles that make a great leader.

Key Takeaways:

1. Jamie's 3 Roles of a Leader:
   1. Define the North Star
   2. Have a structure for how they run and manage of teams
   3. Shows up when the chips are down
2. Lance's Keys to a Great Leader:
   1. Willingness to listen to other points of view even when it's different from yours
   2. Being able to be honest
   3. Selflessness
   4. Decisive
   5. Trust in team
3. Delegate results, not tasks
4. Take care of the organization, then the people, then the customer