CHICAGO – October 5, 2011 – Navigant (NYSE: NCI) announced today that it has acquired Paragon Health, a leading national physician practice management and consulting firm, specializing in Cardiovascular practices. Paragon’s experienced professionals will bolster Navigant’s National Healthcare practice management capabilities, and further positions the practice as the leading healthcare consulting firm for designing, developing and implementing solutions that create high-performing healthcare organizations. Paragon’s Founder and President, Jim Palazzo, will assume a leadership role within Navigant Healthcare, directing the Practice Management team.
What Makes a Physician Revenue Cycle Tick
Many forces are driving the trend in hospital acquisition of physician groups, from the need to strengthen physician-hospital alignment to new payment systems that will cut fees and lower reimbursement. But simply acquiring a physician practice doesn’t guarantee financial success for hospitals. Achieving financial objectives requires effective management of the practice-based behaviors, processes, and tools that affect the revenue stream. But hospitals and health systems face several challenges in managing the revenue cycle performance of the physician groups they acquire. To begin with, hospitals and physician practices are separate entities with goals, practices, and standards that are often very different from each other. The challenges that result from such differences—such as differences in culture, policies, tools, and processes—can be alternately clear cut and hard to grasp. Without a solid understanding of what makes each entity “tick,” achieving the financial targets a hospital sets for a physician practice can be an exercise in futility. Improving the bottom line of hospital-acquired physician practices requires an understanding of these challenges and a plan to overcome them. Following are five strategies for enhancing revenue cycle performance of physician practices.
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5 Guidelines for Pursuing a Practice Acquisition
Before finalizing any deal to acquire a physician practice, the strategic, financial, operational, legal, and regulatory ramifications must be adequately addressed. P. Anthony Long, Senior Vice President, and William Cherry, Vice President, Paragon Health, offer the following tips for ensuring a successful—and sustainable—acquisition.
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Successful Cardiology Integration Must Focus Beyond Gaining Efficiencies
In Jan. 2010, St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, acquired the practice Cardiologists LC. In March 2010, however, the executive administrator of CLC left. To ensure integration efforts between the hospital and practice did not stall, Paragon Health was called in to provide an interim manager for CLC. Tom Johnston, vice president of Paragon, and Todd Langager, MD, an electrophysiologist and senior physician in CLC, explain how integration was achieved and why gaining efficiency should not be the only consideration when two organizations partner.
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Physician Coding: 5 Ways Outsourcing Specialty Skills Can Add Value to the Bottom Line
Written by Sandy Dixon, CPC, Senior Consultant, Michelle Reese, CPC, Senior Consultant, Tess Turri, CPC, Senior Consultant, Paragon Health
As physician practices navigate increasingly challenging times, with reductions in reimbursement, increasing costs and a heightening regulatory environment, developing and deploying best business practices becomes increasingly difficult. With practices already running on scarce resources, training individuals to become highly specialized in key areas is challenging. The problem is a lack of appropriate expertise in an area such as coding can prove to be financially unwise. Here are five ways outsourcing rather than insourcing coding compliance and education functions can be a better fit for the overall operations of a physician practice.
