Joseph Rugg's Health Law Blog

Recent surveys about physicians leaving practice or going out of business in droves were done in the heat of the moment of the Supreme Court ruling. Nonetheless, they signify a long-term concern, uncertainty, and fear, and there is good reason for all three.

Everyone in the practice and allied health world should take the title of the legislation seriously — The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). It does not say physician protection nor does it say it will be affordable for you. Most practices will suffer serious consequences, or fail without proper planning.

The safest course of action is to presume the ACA will continue either in whole or in part. Any replacement is a blank page, and either way, physicians will be negatively affected.

Here are five things you must do to protect your practice:

1. Get involved.

2. If you are a primary-care physician, take care in becoming dependent on Medicaid even though they will be paying Medicare rates.

3. If you are not a primary-care physician, act now to develop and implement strategies to manage your payer mix.

4. Improve your quality of service.

5. Cut every ounce of fat in your operation and invest the savings in quality, image and marketing to keep and add as many privately insured patients as possible.

See on member.ubmmedica.com

For an aggregation of other articles on Hot Topics in Healthcare Law, go to my magazine on Scoop.it – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law and Regulation and my newspaper on Paper.li – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law.

For an aggregation of other articles on improving healthcare, go to my internet magazine Scoop.it! Changing Health for the Better.