Medical practices constantly seek effective strategies to maintain and improve their success while offering patients high-quality care.
As medical director of Lone Tree, Colo.-based SpineOne, Perry Haney, MD, has been at the forefront of working to keep private practices relevant and interesting for physicians and patients in the ever-changing healthcare landscape.
Dr. Haney is speaking on a panel titled " Spine Practice – How Do I Keep My Practice Thriving and Interesting" at the Becker's 15th Annual Spine, Orthopedic and Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference + The Future of Spine, June 22 to 24, 2017 in Chicago. Click here to learn more and register.
Q: What steps have you taken to ensure your practice is successful going forward?
Perry Haney: I think the most important thing I did was 12 years ago, when I decided to build my own facility. As part of that facility I included an imaging center with CT and MRI, a two-OR ambulatory surgery center and then the clinic itself. And I think probably integrating that way may be unique to Colorado and it may be unique to states that have corporate practices of medicine because I was able to structure that so they're all separate corporations or sub-chapters under larger corporations.
I've always been someone who's wanted to make sure that I can give the best possible care to my patients and not rely on having insurance companies tell me what I can and can't do. Obviously, they're still going to try to do that and still do. But having control of your own destiny by having surgical facilities, imaging facilities as well as your clinic is probably one of the best things I've done.
The other step to take is make sure you see patients in a timely fashion. We're a back clinic and we advertise ourselves as being an emergency room for neck and back pain. We get people in the day that they call unless they want to wait 24 or 48 hours; but they have the option of getting in immediately.
We also make sure we practice patient-centered medicine so that it's between the patient and doctor. We try to keep the insurance company out of it as much as we can.
Q: How do you keep your practice interesting?
PH: The main thing is that I've set up a structure where employed physicians can come and actually practice medicine. Our staff tries to make sure that they can practice like doctors practiced 30 or 40 years ago when it was them and the patient and they decided what needed to be done. We get it done and we get it done rapidly — as quickly as the patient wants.
We have people trained to deal with the insurance companies and the third-party payers. It takes a lot of stress off the physician. There are still things the physician has to do in dealing with the insurance companies and the intermediaries between the patient and the doctor but we try to take as much of that out as possible.
Q: What is one change you plan to make over the next year that will help your practice thrive in the future?
PH: I think trying to assess what's going to happen with healthcare — period. We're going to free ourselves more and more — as much as we can — from third party payer influence. It kind of depends on how the ACA is varied.
I see a tremendous threat to healthcare in the United States by the ACA. I think it's a death-knell for American medicine. It's moving toward socialism and it's a big part of the entire country moving toward socialism. If we don't rebuff that it's a big component of the U.S. losing what the U.S. has always been.
I'm very much in favor of opposing the ACA and getting medicine back to being between a patient and a doctor — not with third-party payers.
And if that some day means dropping out of the system and going to a cash-based system, we may look at that.
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