The Three Essentials for Success By Dave Jakielo, CHBME is a pivotal time in the medical billing industry. Reimbursement pressure still abounds, many clients and potential clients are merging or becoming employees of larger entities, and management fee price competition is more rampant than it ever has been. In this environment, everyone is faced with the choice to either continue to go with the flow and hope you can, as the song says, “Hang on to what you’ve got,” or become proactive and grow and prosper. Measures must be taken to ensure that tomorrow you can become a better version of who you are today. Ongoing success in the medical billing industry will require a three pronged approach if you want to continue to build a vibrant, profitable company. The three areas you should concentrate on are building bench strength; embracing technology; and networking, selling, and marketing. In many companies, the owner is responsible for every aspect of their company: the client relations, technology choices, and growth of the business. It is impossible to grow and improve a company when one person is responsible for all three of these areas. so let us take a closer look at the three areas mentioned above. The first focus is building bench strength. It is very important that you surround yourself with people who do not simply know what to do – they also need to know the why. It is imperative that you or someone on your team makes the time to teach and mentor every employee in your organization as to why each step is important. When everyone understands “the why” something needs to happen versus just how to perform a duty, they then may be able to contribute to helping develop or modify how processes should be accomplished. I am a firm believer in cross training for every team member. each person should spend time doing every job, unless that position is specialized, like coding. However, coders should spend time learning every other position. When everyone is exposed to how all the pieces fit together and how one department affects every other, it leads to people understanding how important it is to do things right the first time to eliminate unnecessary rework. The second area that will help you improve service to your clients and reduce your operating costs is the adoption of the latest technological tools, such as: 46 HBma BILLINg • JaNuaRY.FeBRuaRY.2014 FROM THE ROaD • scanning to eliminate the need to ever route paper throughout the office; • utilizing the 270–271 and 276–277 transaction sets; • electronic presentment of patient statements; and • establishment of patient and client portals. It will be hard to be price competitive in today’s marketplace if you are stuck in a “manual” versus a “tech savvy” environment. Finally, you must become a persistent networker – the days of growing your business by simply waiting for referrals are gone. One advantage of having a well-trained staff is that you can dedicate more time to sales and marketing. To be considered as having a valuable billing company, you should be growing your top line revenue at a net rate of 10 to 20 percent per year. Without any sales effort, you will probably experience a net decline in revenue of 10 to 20 percent per year and eventually reach a point where you cannot even cover your fixed costs. The good news is that anyone can learn how to become a successful salesperson. You can find thousands of “how to” books written specifically to help turn a person without any selling skills into a selling machine. The key is not just buying the books, but actually reading them and implementing their techniques and suggestions. When you discover a book that you find informative and helpful, I would recommend that you also purchase the audio version so that you can listen over and over. I have owned an audio program by Brian Tracy called 21 Great Ways to Become a Sales Superstar for many years and have listened to it dozens of times. It is amazing how I learn something new each time I listen to it. It all boils down to choice. You can keep trudging along hoping that good things will happen on their own while thinking that what worked in the past will work in the future, or you can be proactive and adopt the philosophy that you want to improve yourself and your company each and every day. Regardless of your choice, your future lies in your hands. Dave Jakielo, CHBME, is an international speaker, consultant, executive coach, and author, and is president of Seminars & Consulting. Dave has been helping companies grow and improve their profitability for over four decades. Sign up for his FREE weekly Success Tips at www.Davespeaks.com. Dave can be reached via email Dave@Davespeaks.com; phone 412-921-0976. It
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