Improve Your Specialty: Take Part in the Phlebology Benchmarking Survey A Call to Action for Phlebologists!
by Linda Chreno
Given the limited amount of healthcare dollars available, and new government backed programs including Accountable Care Organizations (AC Os), reimbursement and cost of doing business data associated with the phlebology practice are ever more important. Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) is the premier medical practice management non-profit organization with a mission “to continually improve the performance of medical group practices and the organizations they represent.” MGMA annually surveys medical practices, striving to identify meaningful trends to help providers recognize opportunities for improvement or gain efficiencies. Despite the robust database from over seventy years of providing services, MGMA possesses no data to the routine operations of a phlebology practice.
Why benchmark?
Benchmarking helps establish performance metrics allowing medical practices the opportunity to compare
themselves to other practices. It’s one of the first steps in evaluating organizational performance and one of the
best ways to identify problems and opportunities for improvement. Because benchmarking measures performance at different times, it’s an important tool for observing changes in practice or physician activity. Understanding how peers code procedures, or that other practices are more cost-effective, can foster positive change for an organization.
Why is this important?
Benchmarking phlebology practice activities has largely been overlooked. At present, MGMA’s survey data base
fails to possess any data pertaining to this specialty. Disparate overhead structures of the solo practice providers compared to the hospital based providers are well known, but unaccounted for in the current RVBRS/RVU system. There is no doubt that efficiencies are gained by performing office-based outpatient phlebology procedures, yet if no data exists on the compensation and production of our practices, how will we fare as revisions in our health care system unfold?
The American Medical Association (AMA) is collaborating with MGMA to provide meaningful revisionary data to
the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in support of physician reimbursement. There is no time like the present to participate in MGMA benchmark surveys in our field of medicine! Your participation in this process will not only bring further awareness of phlebology, it will help to define the value in the services we offer.
What next?
Take the survey! MGMA has made surveys available now. In order for phlebology to be recognized as a distinct
practice category, a minimum of one-hundred surveys must be completed. There is no fee to complete the survey, and you do not need to be a member of MGMA to participate. To assist you or your office administrator, the AC P Headquarters office will share a “tool kit” to ease completion of the cost and compensation surveys. This is an opportunity for each practice to have a voice in shaping phlebology recognition and preserve reasonable reimbursement for the care we provide. If you are interested in participating in this process, please contact:
Caryl Tynan at the AC P
Headquarters Office at
510.346.6800 ext. 107,
or by email at Ctynan@
acpmail.org.