Dr. Woodall, a spine surgeon at Jackson-based Mississippi Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center, was named USOP’s chair of the board of directors in February and serves as a liaison between the physicians and financial sponsors of USOP.
A more well-rounded board and its results
Over the last several months, USOP formed a physician board with representation from each of its 10 practices, Dr. Woodall said. The initiative began as USOP’s new CEO, Stephen Holtzclaw, MD, joined the management services organization.
Including representatives from each practice has proven beneficial allowing the groups to learn from each other, Dr. Woodall said.
“One of the first things we looked at was our nurse practitioners and physician assistants,” Dr. Woodall said. “What does that look like for each practice? And then what are the most efficiently used PA and nurse practitioner teams in each practice? Each practitioner has a partner that they work under. We relied on the business side to break that down, and then come back to all of us and say, ‘Here are the doctors that are using mid level employees very effectively.’ It’s increasing the number of patients that they are able to treat, and this is a model that works.”
The conversations have also helped practices identify ways to better equip underutilized staff. Dr. Woodall also said practices have been able to share strategies on physician compensation and MRI department operations.
Approaching healthcare’s toughest challenges
Reimbursements and payer relations remain one of the toughest challenges across healthcare, and groups with USOP have had the advantage of scale and exchanging revenue cycle advice, Dr. Woodall said.
“One big initiative has been improving the revenue cycle at each practice,” he said. “From the standpoint of how we collect, I thought our practice’s revenue cycle was really sophisticated. Seeing the other 10 practices, bringing in the platform, and being able to bring in revenue cycle experts from outside, we’ve been able to significantly improve and expose weaknesses in our RCM that we never knew were there. Physicians are doing the same amount of work, but we’re able to collect more because we’re able to appeal the denials more effectively. As you gain scale and as you have more manpower and more leadership, you’re able to meet the challenges that the insurance payers present.”
Similarly, it’s physician power that supports compensation models as well at USOP.
“On the physician compensation side, that was one of the things that we set from the beginning. The company cannot change the physician compensation model. Only the physicians can change that model,” he said. “If it wasn’t set up appropriately, and things aren’t going well, the MSO can’t come in and change it. The physicians would have to all vote to change.”