Practice Management

For those of you that have not yet received the AMA Physician Practice Information survey, we finally found a way to request the survey. The President of our practice, who is an AMA member, emailed PPISurvey@mathematica-mpr.com requesting to participate in the survey. The next day we received a link to the survey with log in information. 

Hope this works for others and we can increase our participation in this important survey!

Hello Everyone,

I reached out to the AMA survey team, and they set up my practice to participate. I'm attaching a blank PDF form for the survey itself, which you can review. I don't think it's too long or laborious. It's also really important that as many of us participate as possible. If you reach out to them, they will take a few days to set you up with the survey and then grant you an extension to 7/31 which is plenty of time to fill it out. I don't think the survey is too long or laborious. They're also willing to help you along. I jumped on a quick call with them. Here are some helpful notes for answers I received from the survey team or research I found from the relevant instructions while completing the survey, which others may find helpful (noted by survey section references):

• P3: Since radiology touches many different specialties, I asked about which I should select. My intuition was that we should select three of them: diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology, and nuclear medicine. I did not select neurology or neurosurgery despite the fact that we touch on both with NIR. This is how they responded when they agreed with my approach: Each physician that bills Medicare must identify their specialty or specialties based on the Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System (PECOS) taxonomy (https://pecos.cms.hhs.gov/pecos/login.do#headingLv1). When physicians submit a claim to Medicare, they must include a specialty from the PECOS taxonomy, but they can select different specialties for different claims based on the service provided. This shouldn't necessarily affect the way you complete the survey. We still believe the approach you are taking is appropriate, but we wanted to make sure we followed up on this topic.
• P4: We do not break out staffing or expense data by specialty between diagnostic, IR, etc. so we selected the option to combine them.
• A1: We are entirely hospital-based. Despite the fact that some hospital facilities have regular business hours, they said we should say that we're open 168 hours per week (the max) because we have people working 24/7/365, even though we have an uneven distribution in the number of people working at any one time like all groups obviously will have.
• A6: Even though we have some folks reading at home, since all of our rads are working for hospital facilities, they said we should put 0% for percent of time physicians are being billed in non-facility settings.
• A6: Company retirement contributions should be listed under benefits and not under monetary compensation.
• A6: Locums / Independent Contractor cost should be lumped into total monetary compensation for physicians, as should deferred compensation.
• A6: Employer's share of payroll taxes should be included in benefits.
• A6: Expenses for things like CME, conferences, meals, phone, books, etc. should not be put into physician benefits, but instead should be broken out in practice expenses.
• B1: We do not allocate administrative or clinical staff between physicians and QHPs, so they told us to just dump all relevant expenses into the physician line and ignore allocating staff time to QHPs (our 1 NP) by inputting zeros for them.
• C1: Since we do not allocate expenses equally among our specialties, by revenue, FTEs, utilization, or square footage, they agreed with selecting Other for all and then explaining this further on the next section.
• C2: They agreed with me inputting for following for all boxes, even those which are N/A because we have nothing for things like billable drugs, etc.: "We do not split or allocate these expenses. We report the total for the entire group."
• C3: Since we do not break out most G&A expenses between physicians and QHPs, we lumped everything into physicians here unless we had specifically available info for QHPs.

For those of you that have not yet received the AMA Physician Practice Information survey, we finally found a way to request the survey. The President of our practice, who is an AMA member, emailed PPISurvey@mathematica-mpr.com requesting to participate in the survey. The next day we received a link to the survey with log in information. 

Hope this works for others and we can increase our participation in this important survey!

Update: I'm nixing "nuclear medicine" since all of our rads have primary specialties listed as either Diagnostic Radiology or Interventional Radiology.

Hope others find this helpful!

Hello Everyone,

I reached out to the AMA survey team, and they set up my practice to participate. I'm attaching a blank PDF form for the survey itself, which you can review. I don't think it's too long or laborious. It's also really important that as many of us participate as possible. If you reach out to them, they will take a few days to set you up with the survey and then grant you an extension to 7/31 which is plenty of time to fill it out. I don't think the survey is too long or laborious. They're also willing to help you along. I jumped on a quick call with them. Here are some helpful notes for answers I received from the survey team or research I found from the relevant instructions while completing the survey, which others may find helpful (noted by survey section references):

• P3: Since radiology touches many different specialties, I asked about which I should select. My intuition was that we should select three of them: diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology, and nuclear medicine. I did not select neurology or neurosurgery despite the fact that we touch on both with NIR. This is how they responded when they agreed with my approach: Each physician that bills Medicare must identify their specialty or specialties based on the Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System (PECOS) taxonomy (https://pecos.cms.hhs.gov/pecos/login.do#headingLv1). When physicians submit a claim to Medicare, they must include a specialty from the PECOS taxonomy, but they can select different specialties for different claims based on the service provided. This shouldn't necessarily affect the way you complete the survey. We still believe the approach you are taking is appropriate, but we wanted to make sure we followed up on this topic.
• P4: We do not break out staffing or expense data by specialty between diagnostic, IR, etc. so we selected the option to combine them.
• A1: We are entirely hospital-based. Despite the fact that some hospital facilities have regular business hours, they said we should say that we're open 168 hours per week (the max) because we have people working 24/7/365, even though we have an uneven distribution in the number of people working at any one time like all groups obviously will have.
• A6: Even though we have some folks reading at home, since all of our rads are working for hospital facilities, they said we should put 0% for percent of time physicians are being billed in non-facility settings.
• A6: Company retirement contributions should be listed under benefits and not under monetary compensation.
• A6: Locums / Independent Contractor cost should be lumped into total monetary compensation for physicians, as should deferred compensation.
• A6: Employer's share of payroll taxes should be included in benefits.
• A6: Expenses for things like CME, conferences, meals, phone, books, etc. should not be put into physician benefits, but instead should be broken out in practice expenses.
• B1: We do not allocate administrative or clinical staff between physicians and QHPs, so they told us to just dump all relevant expenses into the physician line and ignore allocating staff time to QHPs (our 1 NP) by inputting zeros for them.
• C1: Since we do not allocate expenses equally among our specialties, by revenue, FTEs, utilization, or square footage, they agreed with selecting Other for all and then explaining this further on the next section.
• C2: They agreed with me inputting for following for all boxes, even those which are N/A because we have nothing for things like billable drugs, etc.: "We do not split or allocate these expenses. We report the total for the entire group."
• C3: Since we do not break out most G&A expenses between physicians and QHPs, we lumped everything into physicians here unless we had specifically available info for QHPs.

For those of you that have not yet received the AMA Physician Practice Information survey, we finally found a way to request the survey. The President of our practice, who is an AMA member, emailed PPISurvey@mathematica-mpr.com requesting to participate in the survey. The next day we received a link to the survey with log in information. 

Hope this works for others and we can increase our participation in this important survey!

Update: I'm nixing "nuclear medicine" since all of our rads have primary specialties listed as either Diagnostic Radiology or Interventional Radiology.

Hope others find this helpful!

Hello Everyone,

I reached out to the AMA survey team, and they set up my practice to participate. I'm attaching a blank PDF form for the survey itself, which you can review. I don't think it's too long or laborious. It's also really important that as many of us participate as possible. If you reach out to them, they will take a few days to set you up with the survey and then grant you an extension to 7/31 which is plenty of time to fill it out. I don't think the survey is too long or laborious. They're also willing to help you along. I jumped on a quick call with them. Here are some helpful notes for answers I received from the survey team or research I found from the relevant instructions while completing the survey, which others may find helpful (noted by survey section references):

• P3: Since radiology touches many different specialties, I asked about which I should select. My intuition was that we should select three of them: diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology, and nuclear medicine. I did not select neurology or neurosurgery despite the fact that we touch on both with NIR. This is how they responded when they agreed with my approach: Each physician that bills Medicare must identify their specialty or specialties based on the Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System (PECOS) taxonomy (https://pecos.cms.hhs.gov/pecos/login.do#headingLv1). When physicians submit a claim to Medicare, they must include a specialty from the PECOS taxonomy, but they can select different specialties for different claims based on the service provided. This shouldn't necessarily affect the way you complete the survey. We still believe the approach you are taking is appropriate, but we wanted to make sure we followed up on this topic.
• P4: We do not break out staffing or expense data by specialty between diagnostic, IR, etc. so we selected the option to combine them.
• A1: We are entirely hospital-based. Despite the fact that some hospital facilities have regular business hours, they said we should say that we're open 168 hours per week (the max) because we have people working 24/7/365, even though we have an uneven distribution in the number of people working at any one time like all groups obviously will have.
• A6: Even though we have some folks reading at home, since all of our rads are working for hospital facilities, they said we should put 0% for percent of time physicians are being billed in non-facility settings.
• A6: Company retirement contributions should be listed under benefits and not under monetary compensation.
• A6: Locums / Independent Contractor cost should be lumped into total monetary compensation for physicians, as should deferred compensation.
• A6: Employer's share of payroll taxes should be included in benefits.
• A6: Expenses for things like CME, conferences, meals, phone, books, etc. should not be put into physician benefits, but instead should be broken out in practice expenses.
• B1: We do not allocate administrative or clinical staff between physicians and QHPs, so they told us to just dump all relevant expenses into the physician line and ignore allocating staff time to QHPs (our 1 NP) by inputting zeros for them.
• C1: Since we do not allocate expenses equally among our specialties, by revenue, FTEs, utilization, or square footage, they agreed with selecting Other for all and then explaining this further on the next section.
• C2: They agreed with me inputting for following for all boxes, even those which are N/A because we have nothing for things like billable drugs, etc.: "We do not split or allocate these expenses. We report the total for the entire group."
• C3: Since we do not break out most G&A expenses between physicians and QHPs, we lumped everything into physicians here unless we had specifically available info for QHPs.

For those of you that have not yet received the AMA Physician Practice Information survey, we finally found a way to request the survey. The President of our practice, who is an AMA member, emailed PPISurvey@mathematica-mpr.com requesting to participate in the survey. The next day we received a link to the survey with log in information. 

Hope this works for others and we can increase our participation in this important survey!