Question

The financial health of the medical clinic depends upon accurate, timely and sound financial practices. Although you may determine a career in the clinical side of medical assisting is more to your liking, you must be aware of and excel in all aspects of the clinic activities. Thinking about responsibilities related to the clinics financial practices, how would you incorporate your skills and knowledge in this area with the Attributes of Professional ism? Do you keep personal financial records? Do you balance your checkbook and reconcile your bank statements at least month? Consider at least two clinic scenarios (such as being designated to balance the daily co-payments and updating the accounts receivable and pavables for your month-end provider meeting and write in your jour mal how you would accomplish these tasks, incorporating the Attributes of Professionalism.

Answer 1

The financial health of the medical clinic depends upon accurate, timely, and sound financial practices.

I would incorporate my skills and knowledge related to the clinic's financial practices in maintaining the good financial health of the clinic with the attributes of professionalism. I would try to understand open accounts receivable balances completely. I would focus on the two only sources of income for medical clinic, patients and insurance companies.

I would have regular views on some key performance indicators of financial health of the clinic such as :-

• Accounts receivable (AR) : I would run recommended practice management reports like AR summary, AR by insurance payer, days in AR, days in AR per payer, patient aging and insurance aging.
• Charges : I would run recommended practice management reports like net receipts, net collection percentage, charge summary, charges by rendering provider, charges per visit, missing charges reports, etc.
• Appointments : common reports to be focused are copay deficit report, unbilled appointment report, cancellation report, referral source report, etc.
• Payments : regularly viewed reports are daily deposits, billed CPT codes, procedure code payment performance, etc.
• Claims follow up : commonly focused reports are adjustment analysis report, rejection report, denial rate by payer, denial rates by CPT codes.

I would keep personal financial records, balance the check book, and reconcile the bank statements at least a month. I would also prepare chart of accounts template, fee analysis spreadsheet, financial analysis worksheet, financial vital signs worksheet, health plan comparison spreadsheet and internal control and fraud prevention checklist. I would also regularly carry out unit cost analysis to calculate costs per visit.

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