Sometimes it feels as though your physician private practice is buried in office documents. Forms for internal practice records. Forms for external business interactions. Financial forms. Medical forms. Government forms. And all of them need to be consistent and accurate.
Access to business and medical documents is critical to the successful operation of medical services, according to Taylor Johnson, the AMA’s manager of physician practice development, and independent practices have a particularly important need.
“Private practices have no access to the resources that larger health systems have,” she said. “Many smaller private practices did not have access to standardized forms at all when they began their practice.”
“One of the No. 1 resources that private practices need is access to the forms that are in general use among other medical systems,” added Johnson, who managed an independent practice prior to joining the AMA.
Johnson and Meghan Kwiatkowski, program manager for physician practice sustainability at the AMA, led a project to aggregate the most commonly used business and medical forms and created an appendix to the AMA STEPS Forward® Private Practice Playbook. Together, they organized information and resources to help physicians navigate medical practice business operations and efficiency solutions to create and support a thriving business.
Dozens of ready-to-use forms
The “AMA STEPS Forward® Private Practice Playbook: Sample Forms Appendix” is a collection of templated forms for independent physician practices that address patient, employee and administrative needs. The appendix includes 39 editable Microsoft Word documents that independent physician practices can use immediately to build and maintain their records. The documents have been reviewed by the AMA office of general counsel, as well as outside agencies including government and private payers.
The appendix includes four categories:
- New patient packet.
- Patient documents.
- Administrative documents.
- Employee documents.
Independent practices can use the forms in various aspects of their business and medical operations.
“There’s plenty that can go wrong with the capture and maintenance of information in a private practice and the need to maintain accurate information on business and medical operations continues to grow as their requirements increase,” Kwiatkowski explained.
For example, telehealth was not widely used prior to the COVID-19 pandemic due to governmental. But during the COVID-19 public health emergency, telehealth became more common, and physicians and payers created new approval and data forms to capture telehealth and other treatment modes and ensure proper payment, Johnson said.
The appendix also includes medical treatment forms such as medication logs, medical release forms, and other patient-information documents, such as price lists.
The AMA STEPS Forward® toolkit “Telehealth Integration and Optimization” outlines various ways to improve patient care through virtual health care delivery, including:
- Reducing the burden of travel to access care
- Enhancing timely delivery of health care services
- Increasing compliance with treatment plans
- Improving communication with health care practitioners
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Forms can affect bottom line
Other forms available include standard job descriptions and new employee-onboarding forms, as well as other human resources support forms.
The AMA playbook was updated last year to include a collection of templated forms for independent physician practices that address patient, employee and administrative needs, as well as detailed information covering a variety of essential topics, including:
- Revenue-cycle management.
- Strategic planning.
- Patient scheduling.
- Data migration.
- Branding and marketing.
Collecting information about patients in a standardized fashion is essential, as is ensuring that data-collection tools match the forms and information requirements from other participants in the health care community, Kwiatkowski said.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, for example, has a sophisticated standard for information about patients and claims. Without the relevant information, physicians will have difficulty getting paid for approved treatments and procedures, Johnson noted.
It takes astute clinical judgment as well as a commitment to collaboration and solving challenging problems to succeed in independent settings that are often fluid, and the AMA offers the resources and support physicians need to both start and sustain success in private practice.
Other resources found in the Private Practice Playbook include:
- The AMA Path to Private Practice (PDF). This resource offers guidance on strategic planning, finding a practice location, choosing insurance and staffing a practice.
- Private Practice Business Considerations Guide (PDF). Whether physicians decide to own or lease, they will need to contact a bank for a commercial mortgage or financing options. The bank will require a business plan. This guide offers tips on developing a business plan that will outline how physicians can start their practice, obtain funding and direct operations.
- Examples of Patient Process Flow (PDF). This resource maps out a patient’s visit to a physician’s office and details how an efficient workflow can support that visit.
- Private Practice Staffing Guide (PDF). This resource helps physicians determine their administrative and clinical staffing needs and offers tips on creating a team-based model of care and developing a team culture.
Find out about the AMA Private Practice Physicians Section, which seeks to preserve the freedom, independence and integrity of private practice.
