1. Proactively work with companies to promote employee health. Craig Westin, MD, of Illinois Bone and Joint Institute and the Chicago Center for Orthopedics at Weiss Hospital in Chicago, says due to the current economy, employers are working harder to control the costs of healthcare benefits and work-related injuries for their employees. Sports medicine physicians can be proactive and work with companies to discuss ways to reduce workplace expenses. Sports medicine physicians can also work directly with employers to help employees maintain their health as well as assess the “industrial athlete” if they are injured at work.
“The healthcare industry is going to start seeing a shift where even though sports medicine physicians traditionally treated mainly athletes, they may also start treating work-related injuries,” Dr. Westin says. “The same individuals who play soccer may have identical injuries and evaluations as those individuals who work at AT&T. We have to work with employers, physical therapists and [other clinicians] to coordinate care around employees.”
2. Offer Saturday morning clinics year-round. While many practices already have sports Saturday sports injury clinics open during the fall sports and football seasons, Angie Van Utrecht, director of operations at Orthopedic Specialists in Davenport, Iowa, says successful sports medicine practices should offer these clinics to athletes all year. The Saturday morning clinics can be helpful to athletes beyond football players, such as basketball players and weekend warriors. If these individuals know the clinic is available, they are likely to utilize its services when an injury occurs. As Ms. Van Utrecht points out, “soccer, basketball and volleyball (which are fall sports) have the highest rate of ACL tears.” Cheerleaders and track athletes are also likely to incur injuries during the winter and spring seasons.
3. Strengthen communication with rehabilitation specialists. Peter Millett, MD, M.Sc., an orthopedic sports medicine physician and shoulder specialist from the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colo., says patients’ perception is everything when it comes to the delivery of care. This is why it is essential for sports medicine practices to effectively communicate to other providers, thereby creating a sense of globalized care rather than fragmented care. This leads patients to feel their care is truly being handled by a team of specialists.
“I believe that working with high-caliber physical therapists helps us continuously achieve that great patient satisfaction,” he says. “The rehabilitation team comes and makes rounds with us to see patients, and that naturally translates into better outcomes for patients because there’s continuity of care and no miscommunications. If there is a problem, it’s recognized early on because there’s an open communication among the entire team’s members.”
4. Find a balance between clinical and academic expertise. Michael Ciccotti, MD, of Rothman Institute Orthopaedics, chief of sports medicine and professor of orthopedic surgery at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, says successful sports medicine practices should not only possess clinical expertise through appropriate medical school, residency and sports fellowship training but also academic expertise through ongoing medical research. This ensures it is able to treat all types of conditions across a broad spectrum of athletes, including collegiate, recreational and professional athletes.
“A practice should have the clinical expertise and wear-with-all to treat the full spectrum of sports medicine patients with all types of problems,” he says. “Also, practices have to do sports medicine research where they look at a problem very closely, critically analyze factors that may determine the outcome of a treatment and come up with some type of treatment schedule or algorithm based on science.”
5. Fight for the big ticket items during payor contract negotiations. Dr. Antell says it is critical for a sports medicine practice to know where to focus on fighting for the better reimbursement, says Craig Antell, DO, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician at Madison Avenue Physical Rehabilitation and Wellness in New York. This starts with analyzing where your practice makes the most money and working with insurance companies to get greater coverage in those areas because sports medicine practices won’t be able to win every battle at the negotiating table.
“You can pick and choose your fights, but I’d rather fight for the bigger ticket items instead of the smaller ones like office visits,” Dr. Antell says. “For example, sports medicine practices could be negotiating epidural fees for $750 instead of $500 but fall into the trap of trying to increase reimbursement for office visits from $85 to $100.”
