Streamline sales contract management for insurance industry

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hi everybody Jennifer blevin Smith with from integral Clinic Solutions and you're watching my YouTube channel navigating the business of Medicine [Music] before I jump into today's topic I want to let everybody know that my website is up and running and you will be able to find blog posts for all of my videos that I've done my husband my big supporter my biggest fan bless his heart he has turned and will be turning all of my videos into blog posts so if you learn better by reading or you want somewhere to find links that we talk about whatever it might be please check out my website .intricalclinicsolutions.com and you'll see the link for the blogs all right so today we're going to talk about insurance contract negotiations I get this question a lot because it's one of those areas that you're just kind of not sure how to navigate and that's very fair because every insurance is going to be a little bit different but you don't really know how to navigate them until you try and by kind of trial and error you figure it out for the next time you need to negotiate negotiating insurance contracts is sometimes very frustrating I'm not going to lie there isn't an easy way to do it not all payers are open to it I would say at a very minimum you should be operating at least a year before you try to renegotiate your contracts a lot of times the infant knew practices that they have they're not going to be as open to renegotiating your entire contract unless you come to them with very convincing data and reasons why but there is a way that maybe you could try to approach that and I'll talk about that in just a second pair contract negotiations are one of those things that you need to make sure that you have the data and the information to back up and support your thesis if you will this means that you need to be running regular Financial reports you need to understand your operations overhead you need to understand which of your payers is the lowest paying for services what are some of your highest ones I mean you should really be in tuned to all of this in your practice before you just decide that you want to negotiate your contract because that other information I just mentioned is what's going to support most likely your request you should be running reports on a regular basis I have other videos talking about that you should be measuring your key performance indicators and at least by a year year and a half if you just opened your practice you should have a good idea of your ongoing overhead costs your ongoing costs of operations that's what's going to help in this as well as knowing how much it costs you to offer each of the services in which you Bill then you will have to make sure you see what's being reimbursed at a CPT level by each pair to compare and see where you're kind of falling short those outliers and being able to really make a plan of attack of how you're going to do this and who you're going to prioritize negotiating first the best thing to do if a pair comes back and says no we're not ready to renegotiate you need to be longer or if they give you a reason that's great but sometimes they just say no we're not open to renegotiating then I would come back to the table negotiating and ask if they would be open to maybe increasing a few individual CPT codes instead of the entire contract that's kind of the foot in the door approach and that's when those reports that I'm talking about and that data is going to come in handy because then you can decide maybe the most common CPT codes that you Bill you can provide to them and ask if they will increase the reimbursement maybe it's something that the costs have gone up to offer it but it's maybe a niche of yours that you offer that not a lot of people in your area of specialty do in the area you'd want to make sure you tell them how many patients you have from their panel you would want to tell them what sets you apart than other people in your field there's a lot of stuff that you need to do to make them want to keep you as a satisfied customer the thing about Hope insurances is we all know they pretty much hold the upper hand but what information that is very objective can you give to them that they can't argue with or they can't shy away from and that is the information you're going to get from running reports understanding your business really knowing what goes on Services can be really expensive and with the cost of things going up we all know that wages and reimbursement and stuff like that is a lag to catch up with the costs and that is also a very legitimate thing to present to them when you're requesting this I personally hate negotiating contracts because it is kind of a trial and error you're not quite sure you get your hopes up then they kind of just say no and you have to move on and say okay I'll put a reminder on my calendar for next year and sometimes it's just persistence but you want to make sure that you're treating them nicely you're respectful you are professional because that could go a really long way as well I truly believe that the reimbursement in healthcare is going to be based on value value based instead of fee for service at some point in the near future so that is something to keep in mind as well also to keep your costs down you need to make sure you're shopping around for supplies every once in a while maybe finding different vendors or just getting quotes for different things because if they aren't going to negotiate then at least maybe you can try to control costs better by finding things cheaper somewhere else until you can renegotiate an increased reimbursement these are just some just some ideas of course there can be more thinking outside the box but because they say no to renegotiating at that time doesn't mean they won't down the road it doesn't mean you can't ask follow-up questions like when would we be eligible do you have a suggestion can we just do a few CPT codes Etc and just to kind of get that dialogue going so you have a better understanding especially if you're new to this I would love to hear from you as a viewer leaving it in the comments below if you have a lot of experience negotiating with payers if you have certain approaches or suggestions for your colleagues please leave that in the comments below smash the Thumbs Up Button if today's video was helpful please subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and Share my video with all your friends and family and colleagues that might be interested in all seriousness Please share my videos I appreciate the support take care of yourself bye okay [Music]