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Randy Wilmore, Mid-Tennessee Bone & Joint Clinic, PC

On Friday, September 14, the Tennessee Medical Association (TMA) and the Tennessee Medical Group Management Association (TMGMA) will co-host a daylong seminar in Nashville to help their members explore ways to leverage resources and maximize success in the group practice setting.

In today’s evolving healthcare environment, creating effective physician/administrative management teams is one of the best ways to gain a competitive edge. TMGMA president Randy Wilmore, CMPE, said this is an edict that both organizations recognize and appreciate.

“Over the last several years, we’ve developed a very good relationship with the medical society. It’s a real partnership between the medical association and the management association … we each bring different skills to the table,” he explained.

Wilmore, who is CEO of Mid-Tennessee Bone & Joint Clinic, PC, said each association has representation on the other’s board and that both groups often work together on committee and legislative issues in an effort to share knowledge and skill sets.

The September 14 conference — another visible sign of the cooperative spirit between the two organizations — is an effort to help members of both associations shore up the bottom line in the face of an uncertain reimbursement climate.

“We are the only business in the world where you provide a service and have no idea what you’re going to be paid for it,” Wilmore noted.

He added that running a practice of any size in today’s healthcare environment is sophisticated business requiring a broad knowledge base of governmental regulations, accounting methods, medical issues and business management practices.

While Wilmore said he realized it was difficult for physicians to step away from their practice for a day — after all, if they aren’t seeing patients, they aren’t billing — he believes making the effort to attend this conference will result in a long-term payoff.

“Sometimes you have to step back and sharpen the saw to be effective at what you’re doing,” he said, referring to Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Sharpening the saw, the seventh habit, refers to making time to engage in activities that will ultimately make you more efficient and allow more time to balance the various areas of your life. Wilmore said that administrative and medical teams typically couldn’t work any harder than they already were. Therefore, the members of the practice must find a way to make the work hours more productive.

“We’re trying to provide them with tools to be more efficient in what they do,” he said of the seminar.

After registration and the TMGMA breakfast business meeting, which is for members of the management association only, the seminar is set to begin at 9 a.m. Kenneth Hertz, CMPE, from the national organization, Medical Group Management Association Consultant Group (MGMA), is scheduled to lead off the morning talking about physician-administrator teams. Next, his colleague David Gans, vice president of practice management resources for MGMA will share the “secrets” of better-performing practices. During this second session, a peer group of Tennessee practices will also share their success stories and talk about ways they improved their revenue streams.

Lyle Delrich, CMPE, of Pershing, Yoakley & Associates has been selected as the luncheon speaker and will present the “2007 Medical Office Staff Salary Survey Report.” In the afternoon, Robert Tennant, of MGMA’s Government Affairs Division, will talk about how federal health technology initiatives could potentially impact a group practice.

Wilmore, who is currently guiding his own practice through a conversion to electronic medical records, said the technology initiatives would be of particular interest to those working to modernize their systems.

“You go through the valley of despair,” he said only half jokingly. “Your processes are worse while you are going through it, but you hope you come out the other side at a higher level of productivity.”

The afternoon wraps up with a presentation by Rhonda Sides, CPA, director of healthcare services for Crosslin, Vaden & Associates, on trends in medical practice relationships with hospitals. Nashville-based Sides will address gainsharing and joint ventures, among other topics of interest.

“The goal of this conference is to provide those who attend with tools and ideas they can take back to their practice to, one, make them more efficient, or, two, make them more profitable or, three, just to improve their quality of life,” Wilmore concluded. “If we can help them sharpen the saw in any one of these areas, then we’ve been successful.”




September 2007

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