Every 11 seconds a baby boomer becomes eligible for Medicare (MCR). By 2020, there will be 70 million MCR eligible patients in the US. What is your practice strategy for handling MCR patients? Now you may now be asking, why do I need a strategy for seeing MCR patients that is different from how my practice sees and handles non-MCR patients?

The answer is simple. Money. From how many MCR patients a day you see to how you communicate with MCR patients to how many MCR advantage plans you participate in, all have monetary repercussions. With value based bundled payments becoming a reality your strategy could mean the difference between profit and loss.

Proper evaluation of the demographics of your practice neighborhood, a good knowledge of the payer strategy, and a relationship with admitting hospitals will all serve your practice well and help you make these all important strategy decisions. What specialty you practice may also drive some of this strategy. A surgical practice must face the reality of not only shared payments with a hospital, but shared risk as well. Who will it be in your best interest to share that risk with without risk to your practice?

How is your practice using the data collected in your EHR to make important decisions? Especially long term strategy decisions? What data should you be looking at? Over what period of time? How much of a sample is adequate for trending? Can you really use trends to predict the future?

And what about MCD patients? There are today 11million more MCD patients than there were 2 years ago.

These statistics and others, like out of pocket expenses for the average currently insured patient who bought on the exchange, are keeping them from seeing providers at the same rate as when they were uninsured. How do you develop a strategy for the future? Who do you trust to serve your practice with integrity, affordable cost and proven solutions?

Just need to talk about options? Need to have another pair of eyes look at your data? Need “time honed” advice from an expert? Give Medical Management Services a call. Let us help you navigate through strategy.