How to Expand My Cardiology Practice

Many cardiology practices find difficulty sustaining and/or improving performance in the ever-evolving health care environment. Physicians and administrators are balancing increasing patient and provider demands against decreasing resources. The good news is that you don’t have to sit idly by and hope your practice doesn’t fail; rather, there are a number of tactics you can employ to improve performance and help maintain a successful practice. Continue reading for several tips detailing how to expand your cardiology practice.

Evaluating Leadership Roles

Playing an active role in physician leadership can have a major impact on daily operations. For independent practices, consider that your involvement presents the opportunity to better understand the market landscape as practice patterns continue to develop. For recently employed or aligned practices, assuming leadership roles can help ease concerns and frustration felt in practice transition and allow your team to concentrate instead on program growth and development. On the other hand, involvement at the leadership level is not suitable for everyone, as some physicians have little interest in the non-clinical side of the cardiology business and prefer to focus their efforts on the practice of medicine.

Yet, that doesn’t mean you should be deprived of having a voice. Attempt to identify a capable and willing physician lead from your team, with whom you can share your input on strategic planning and operational issues will inevitably help to ensure multiple perspectives are considered. This can lead to considerable improvements in overall practice performance.

Consider Means of Compensation

Regardless of whether you are employed or in an independent practice, it is important that you and your team follow a compensation methodology that incentivizes the right activities for your unique practice. Cardiologists face a number of operational challenges. Many of these challenges are in relation to cardiac diagnostic imaging, hospital call coverage requirements, and outreach. More hospitals and physicians are opting for a group compensation methodology, whereby the physicians are paid (at least in part) for their collective productivity and overall service line performance.

Monitor Physician Office Scheduling

Review the number of patients/day, number of days to schedule a new patient and number of days to see a post hospital procedure follow up. There are times that patients need to be worked into the schedule even if there are no openings.

Maximizing Revenue Cycle Operations

Opportunities typically exist for revenue cycle improvements, despite the best of intentions. From the physician perspective, a cardiology practice can often achieve productivity improvements simply through coding education and more thorough documentation, particularly in the hospital setting.

Invest in Super Equipment

In today’s volatile economic environment, achieving strong operational performance has never been more important—or more challenging—for physicians, administrators, healthcare executives, and the organizations they lead. When executed and approached intelligently, these efforts can help you and your physicians experience significant improvements in your bottom-line results, among other benefits. Whether you’re a hospital, a large cardiology practice or a small practice, PAS can help you with a complete program or expand upon your current program. Our Holter program mitigates common challenges to providing this service. We provide 3-channel digital Holter monitors for increased signal quality and rhythm recognition. You’ll achieve Advanced Arrhythmia Detection with our FDA-approved analysis platform & certified technicians.