Alignment: A Provider’s Guide to Managing the Practice of Health Care uses the method of alignment with proven examples and strategies to help health care providers achieve and maintain optimum effectiveness through continuous enhancement. Focusing on defining information and using it to distinguish your company or practice from the competition, this book is designed to help you take a proactive and cooperative role in health care to benefit patients or your business. From Alignment: A Provider’s Guide to Managing the Practice of Health Care, you’ll receive proven solutions to current problems in order to deliver the best possible services to clients and patients.This book defines alignment as the shortest distance from initiation to successful completion of any desired activity. With this goal in mind, Alignment offers you dozens of recommendations, proven strategies, and examples that will improve your services, including: designing health care systems to meet patient needs and accreditations by stressing clear communication and keeping up with current medical technology developing a checklist that includes four-year goals, defining your capabilities, analyzing finances for cost-effectiveness, and deciding important features to attract new patients and satisfy customers improving service quality by evaluating satisfaction surveys and developing short-term and long-term health care packages that meet employees’individual needs ensuring customer satisfaction by asking patients about their expectations and their needs educating physicians on customer-oriented service and rewarding them for competence and caring reducing the time between the initial patient visit and when the final bill is paid to enhance revenue flow Alignment is complete with graphs, tables, recommendations, objectives and solutions, examples, and a glossary to give you a thorough understanding of current concepts and ideas. Within Alignment: A Provider’s Guide to Managing the Practice of Health Care, you’ll discover innovative and proven techniques that will improve physician/administrator and physician/patient relationships to make your business effective and successful for you and your clients.

Table of Contents:
Contents Foreword Introduction Chapter I. Changes in Health Care Practice: Prevention and Management of Disease Proactive Considerations Provider’s Self-Analysis, Targets, and Benchmarks Provider Group Self-Needs Assessment Optimizing the Physician’s Role The New Medical Economics Mental Attitude, Mind-Set, and Consciousness Changing Roles, Issues of Reimbursement, and Capitation Healthy Outcomes--One Patient at a Time Challenges of the Twenty-First Century Summary Chapter 2. Using Information Proactive Considerations Defining Alignment Selecting Targets for Business Success Implementing Action to Achieve Desired Outcomes Summary Chapter 3. Top Down, Bottom-Up Planning Proactive Considerations Organization-Wide Participation Case Example: Strategic Plan Development for Metropolitan-Based Multispecialty Physician Group and Regional Tertiary Care Hospital Outcomes Management and Continuous Improvement Case Example: Developing a Community-Based Primary Care Group and Hospital Strategic Plan Case Example: Health Plans’ Managed Care Strategic Plan Summary Chapter 4. Aligning Focus, Measurement, and Outcomes Proactive Considerations Inferntial Management and Continuous Improvement Begin with the Desired Outcomes in Mind Establishing a Basis for Health Care Decision Support Outcome Management System Summary Chapter 5. Proactive Considerations Understanding that Consumer Satisfaction Is the Only Way of Doing Business Successfully Excellence in Everything Quality, Consumer Satisfaction, and the Practice of Medicine Myths and Other Misunderstandings About Medical Practice Looking at Health Care from the Patient’s Perspective Making Consumer Satisfaction a Way of Doing Business Becoming Consumer Oriented The Physician’s Role in Developing a Consumer-Oriented Initiative How Consumers Select and Evaluate Physicians The Role of Management in Developing a Consumer-Oriented Initiative The Role of Non-Physician Staff in Making a Consumer-Oriented Initiative Work From Initial Call for Appointment to Billing: Treating the Patient Right Tips for Providing High-Quality Service Consumer Satisfaction: An Overview Summary Chapter 6. Proactive Considerations Consumer Satisfaction Redefined Rank Ordering Clinical Priorities Benchmarking: The Search for Best Practices Forecasting/Predicting Outcomes: The Inferential Evaluation Model (IEM) Enhanced Data System Methodology (EDSM) Process Mapping: Physician, Hospital, and Health Plan Billing Cycle Redesign Integration: Physician/Hospital Outcomes Analysis Goals and Results of Clinic/Hospital Integration of Business Office Key Indicator Definitions and Drill-Down Analysis: Preparation for Action Plan Development Report Cards Physician/Practitioner Information Systems Developing Trust Between Providers and a Health Plan 1995 Physican-Focused Wellness Member Satisfaction Survey Done by Wellness Health Plan 1996 Internal All Physicians Guide Summary Resources Notes Glossary Bibliography Index