Dr. Woodall, a spine surgeon at Jackson-based Mississippi Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center, and U.S. Orthopaedic Partners chair of the board of directors, discussed his outlook with Becker’s.
Note: This conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
Question: What do you think the next evolution will be for groups like yours?
Dr. JR Woodall: The things we’re figuring out right now are how to improve the revenue cycle at each practice. I think we’re getting more sophisticated with pre-authorizations. Another component of the payer challenges are more and more pre-authorization burdens for imaging and surgical procedures. We’re getting more sophisticated with a weekly newsletter that outlines the things we’re seeing and tells physicians to document appropriately and on time, along with tips. From a system standpoint you’re able to expose areas of weakness because you can compare them across the platform.
Q: How should independent groups be thinking about orthopedic consolidation?
JRW: That’s exactly what we were faced with five years ago when we met when we decided to form USOP. How do we best position ourselves for these challenges and for all the things that are sent to RCM? How do we improve our relationship with the payers? How do we become more effective? From a surgery center standpoint, how do we develop best practices?
To me it’s putting a group of the best practices together, and combining them is much more powerful than tagging your group to a hospital’s referral base.
That’s the decision people have to make. They might be pressured to join the hospital because they need referrals. I think our mentality was that we would rather build something that is the highest quality care, the most efficient system, and make that be the thing that attracts the patients. If you can use data across the platform to drive quality and efficiency, that’ll be the draw for the patients to come to you rather than leaning on a hospital to provide your patients.