NatRevMD

NatRevMD
  • 5.0 (28)
  • Medicine
  • Updated Weekly

Medical billing tips for healthcare professionals — by healthcare professionals.  This podcast is here to help private practices get paid what they’ve earned. We share real-world strategies for accurate coding, smoother billing workflows, and fewer denials — all from a team that’s been in your shoes. Whether you’re just getting started or trying to tighten up your revenue cycle, you’ll get practical advice you can actually use. Join the conversation in our Facebook Group: NatRevMDLearn more at www.natrevmd.com

  1. 6h ago

    #212 High Income Is Not the Same as Wealth: What Physician Owners Must Decide Before Their Next Dollar Arrives

    Send us Fan Mail Resources  MoneyFitMD: moneyfitmd.com natrevmd.com Dr. Latifat never learned anything about money in medical school, and by her own account avoided it entirely until fear of ending up like her burned-out attendings forced her to face it. She paid off $200,000 in student loans in about two and a half years without extra shifts, then built MoneyFitMD to help other women physicians do the same.  Why physicians pay themselves last  Most physician owners don't set out to skip their own paycheck. Dr. Latifat points to a scarcity mindset, a fear that there's never going to be enough, no matter what the actual numbers say. Physicians usually aren't motivated by money itself, they're motivated by security, time with family, and not worrying about the future. The work is connecting those things to an actual plan.  The story that changes the stakes  Dr. Latifat shares the story of a physician forced to close her practice for health reasons. Because she'd focused all her energy on the business and never built personal wealth outside of it, closing the practice meant she had nothing to fall back on. Her point: your business is not your wealth, it's a separate entity, and your business should be funding your personal wealth, not standing in for it.  It's 20 percent math, 80 percent psychology  Dr. Latifat's take: physicians are good at the math, they run successful practices and understand billing. What trips them up is behavior. She's writing her third book on exactly this problem.  The CEO Money Hour  One hour a week, same time every week if possible (hers is Fridays), spent entirely on personal finance, not business finance. It solves two problems at once: not having time, and not knowing what to do with the time you have. Dr. Latifat has clients who've built physical rituals around it, a dedicated space, even a specific mug, because the habit is as much psychological as it is financial.  Two paths  For physicians who avoid money entirely and want a simple foundation, MoneyFitMD offers a 16-week foundational program covering debt, spending, and the financial basics. For physicians whose finances are stable but who want their wealth and their life to actually line up, there's Wealth Village, an ongoing community built around a broad definition of wealth: money, assets, time, relationships, and play.  This week, try this  Block one hour this week, same time if you can manage it, and spend it only on personal finance. No business numbers allowed. Ask yourself the question the episode keeps coming back to: if your practice closed tomorrow, what would you personally have? Grab Dr. Latifat's CEO Money Hour download to structure that first session instead of starting from a blank page. Episode breakdown  How a GI doctor becomes a money coach COVID and founding MoneyFitMD Why physicians pay themselves last Business success versus personal wealth It's 20 percent math, 80 percent psychology The CEO Money Hour Two paths: the foundational program and Wealth Village

  2. 1d ago

    #211 $1.3 Million and 18 Days: What a Cyberattack Actually Costs an Independent Practice

    Send us Fan Mail Resources  Cybersecurity Incident Response Checklist: https://eligibility.natrevmd.com/natrevmd-cybersecurity-checklist natrevmd.com Trusted Resources: https://natrevmd.com/trusted-resources/ A healthcare record sells for 10 to 40 times more than a credit card number on criminal markets, and it cannot be cancelled the way a card can. Independent practices hold that data with the least defense in the entire healthcare system: one IT contractor, a server in a closet, and no one whose job it is to think about security. Attackers know it.  Why independent practices are the target  Three attack vectors specific to practice settings:   Phishing emails that look like they are from an EMR vendor, billing company, or payer. Remote access set up for telehealth or post-COVID flexibility that was never properly secured. Third-party vendor access, where a billing company or IT contractor gets breached and the practice is compromised through them.  What to do in the first 24 hours if you are hit  1.  Isolate immediately. Disconnect affected systems from the network, but do not power them down, powered systems preserve evidence forensic teams need.  2.  Call your cyber insurance carrier first, then your attorney. Do not call the attackers, and do not pay anything without guidance.  3.  Document everything from the moment you discover the breach. This becomes the foundation of your HIPAA breach report if one is required, and the 60-day notification clock starts at discovery.  4.  Do not restore from backup until forensics has cleared the system. Restoring too early can reintroduce the attack.  Three asks for your team this week  Ask your IT contractor: do we have multi-factor authentication enabled on our EMR, our email, and our remote access tools? If not, when can you turn it on? Ask your IT contractor: when was the last time we tested a restore from our backup? Can you run a test this month? Call your business insurance broker: do we have cyber liability coverage? If not, what would it cost to add it? Episode breakdown  Why independent practices are the target Three attack vectors specific to practice settings Five things most practices are not doing What to do in the first 24 hours if hit Three asks for your team this week

  3. 5d ago

    #210 1 in 5 Modifier 25 Claims Might Not Survive an Audit

    Send us Fan Mail Resources  RECOVER Diagnostic: https://eligibility.natrevmd.com/recover-quiz-lp natrevmd.com Payment Posting Audit Checklist: https://eligibility.natrevmd.com/payment-posting-checklist Show notes  A provider sees a patient for a scheduled procedure. A separate problem comes up mid-visit, gets evaluated, and the practice bills both services with Modifier 25 attached. The claim pays, and everyone moves on, until that same claim gets swept into a targeted payer audit because the documentation never actually supported a separate, significant E/M service.  The three failure patterns  Routine pre-procedure work billed as a separate visit:   Baseline assessment before a procedure, confirming the patient is appropriate, reviewing labs, checking vitals, is part of the procedure. It is not a separate E/M, and Modifier 25 does not apply just because something happened before the procedure.  Cloned or thin documentation:   An assessment and plan identical to the note from two visits ago, or a problem mentioned in one line with no distinct plan, will not survive a payer review. The documentation has to show medical decision-making distinct from, and above and beyond, the procedure.  Modifier 25 used to override a denial:   A claim gets bundled and denied, someone appends Modifier 25 and resubmits, and it pays. If the documentation never supported a separate E/M, that resubmission was not a correction. It was a workaround, and it is exactly the pattern payer audits look for. The global period trap  Global periods run 10 days for minor procedures and 90 days for major surgeries. During that window, routine E/M care for the same procedure is bundled and not separately billable, even with Modifier 25 attached. A genuinely unrelated new problem may have a path to separate billing, but it needs documentation of the unrelatedness and compliance with payer-specific global period rules. Procedural specialties, surgical groups, orthopedics, gastroenterology, dermatology, OB/GYN, carry the most risk here.  The five-question audit test  1.  Was a significant E/M service actually performed, beyond the usual work of the procedure?  2.  Is the separate problem, assessment, and management clearly visible in the documentation?  3.  Would the E/M have been separately reportable if the procedure had not occurred that day?  4.  Do current NCCI, global-period, and payer-specific rules allow Modifier 25 here?  5.  Could the practice defend this claim on the medical record alone, not just the modifier?  Three actions this week  Pull 20 to 30 Modifier 25 claims from the last 90 days across your most frequent providers and run each one through the five-question test. Where claims fail, start with provider education, one conversation with examples from their own documentation, not a policy memo. If more than 20 percent of the sample fails, add a pre-release review for high-frequency or high-risk providers for 60 to 90 days while the pattern corrects. Episode breakdown  The setup: what Modifier 25 is actually supposed to communicate The three failure patterns Three cases: yes, no, or verify The global period trap The five-question audit test Running your own Modifier 25 practice audit

  4. Sep 1

    #209 She Left the Colonoscopy Treadmill. Here Is How She Gets Paid Now

    Send us Fan Mail  Dr. Emily Ward knew in March 2020 that she was done. She left her gastroenterology partnership in 2023. The reason for the gap was not fear. The practice worked, the money was good, and staying was the rational choice every morning until it was not. She joins Heather to walk through what she built after that, and the part nobody puts in the announcement post: how you actually get paid once you step outside the systems that normally do the paying.  THE BACKGROUND  Board certified in internal medicine and pediatrics before gastroenterology, with early microbiome research behind her. Ten years in private practice, most of it colonoscopy after colonoscopy with very little conversation attached.  THE FIRST PIVOT  GutsyRx, an online gut and rectal health marketplace for women, built for the patient she was in 2020: postpartum, perimenopausal, and unable to find anyone to talk to about it.  THE SECOND PIVOT  The community kept asking when she was coming back to see people in person. She opened a cash-pay concierge clinic in 2025. No payer contracts, opted out of Medicare.  THE THREE PAYMENT PATHWAYS  Pathway 1: her own cash-pay endoscopy center. She got as far as a pro forma with a consultant who had launched endoscopists before. His read was that she would need payer contracts for the numbers to work, which defeated the point.  Pathway 2: employment at a facility, patients paying her consultation fee and running the procedure through insurance. Compliance gets murky against a Medicare opt-out, and she loses the scheduling control that makes high-touch care possible.  Pathway 3: the hybrid, and the one she runs. Patients pay her professional fee directly. Facility, anesthesia, and pathology go through insurance or cash, patient's choice. Every patient so far has chosen insurance for that portion.  WHAT SHE WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY  She would not have built the WordPress and custom e-commerce platform to the depth she did. That capital would have moved further inside the in-person practice.  THREE ACTIONS THIS WEEK  • Write down which parts of your week you would keep if the revenue stayed flat. That is the list worth building around.  • If you run any cash-pay service alongside insurance, confirm the two sides reconcile independently and nothing is being written off into the gap.  • Before your next platform investment, ask what the same build would cost eighteen months from now. The answer has changed.  OUR GUEST  Dr. Emily Ward, MD, GutsyRx  gutsyrx.com  |  Instagram @gutsyrx_guthealth  |  LinkedIn: [insert profile URL]  FREE RESOURCE  Practice Financial Health Dashboard for Physicians  eligibility.natrevmd.com/free-practice-financial-health-dashboard-for-physicians-natrevmd  RECOVER DIAGNOSTIC  eligibility.natrevmd.com/recover-quiz-lp  MORE FROM US  Payment Posting Audit Checklist: eligibility.natrevmd.com/payment-posting-checklist  Everything else: natrevmd.com  MENTIONED  The 6 Types of Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni

  5. Aug 28

    #208 The Medicare Rule That Means You Cannot Bill for Half the Lab Tests You Order

    Send us Fan Mail Part two of two. If you send a specimen to an outside lab and they bill you eighteen dollars for it, eighteen dollars is the most you can bill Medicare. Not your contracted rate. That is the anti-markup rule, and it is one of two things that quietly rewrite the math on in-office lab.  What to pull first. Start from your last 90 days of reference lab orders, grouped by test name and CPT code. That is demand, not a projection. Then map each test to its PAMA rate from the CMS Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule, and check whether your commercial payers hold a separate lab fee schedule from your office visit schedule. Many do.  How Medicare lab billing works. Medicare pays the lesser of your billed charge or the PAMA rate, and there is no negotiating it. Billing $45 against an approximately $18 rate pays approximately $18. The anti-markup rule then says that if you did not perform the test yourself under your own CLIA certificate, you cannot bill Medicare above what the reference lab charged you. And ordering provider enrollment matters, because lab bills under the ordering NPI directly and incident-to does not apply.  The four costs that get underestimated. Reagent per reportable result, QC materials run daily whether or not you test a patient, proficiency testing for moderately complex, and staff time. That last one decides it: five to fifteen minutes per rapid test, which at twenty tests a day is $42 to $175 in daily labor.  The honest ceiling. On rapid strep at a blended $19 with about $10.80 of variable cost, contribution margin is $8.20 a test and break-even is about 43 tests a month. A practice converting 126 of 180 referred strep tests clears roughly $681 a month from strep alone. A full waived menu at good volume might reach $3,000 to $6,000 a month. Real money, and a real compliance program.  Three actions this week  Have your billing team pull 90 days of send-out orders grouped by test name and CPT code. That single report is your demand baseline. Look up the current PAMA rate for every test on your candidate menu at the CMS Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule for your year and locality. Check how your send-out tests are currently being billed to Medicare against the anti-markup rule, before you model anything new. Episode breakdown  Segment 1: what to pull before any revenue projection Segment 2: how Medicare lab billing actually works, three rules Segment 3: the business case model and a worked break-evenResources  Practice Financial Health Dashboard for Physicians  eligibility.natrevmd.com/free-practice-financial-health-dashboard-for-physicians-natrevmd RECOVER Diagnostic  eligibility.natrevmd.com/recover-quiz-lp CMS Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule  cms.gov/medicare/payment/fee-schedules/clinical-laboratory Trusted resources library  natrevmd.com/trusted-resources/ Part 1: EP207, should you bring lab testing in-house?

  6. Aug 25

    #207 Medicare Pays $18 for a Strep Test. Here Is What That Means for In-Office Lab

    Send us Fan Mail In-office lab is one of the most common ancillary additions practices consider, and one of the easiest to get expensively wrong. Part one of two: the framework that decides everything before you spend a dollar.  What CLIA is. The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, passed in 1988 and administered by CMS, govern all lab testing on human specimens. Every test your practice runs on a patient sample requires a certificate. Which certificate you need depends on the complexity of the test, not on what you would like to do.  The three categories. Waived tests are simple enough for FDA-approved over the counter use: strep, flu, COVID antigen, dipstick, glucose, pregnancy. A Certificate of Waiver runs about $150 every two years with no routine inspection, and the compliance standard is following the manufacturer's instructions exactly. Moderately complex covers CBC, CMP and UA with microscopy, and requires a designated lab director, documented competency, daily QC, proficiency testing and routine inspection. High complexity is hospital and reference lab territory.  Getting certified. Confirm your exact analyzer model and test kit are on the CMS waived list, file Form CMS-116 with your state or MAC, expect two to four weeks and about $150, then build your policies and train your staff. Only then buy equipment. CLIA number first, equipment second.  The four questions. What are you already referring out that you could run yourself? What does your patient population need at point of care? What is your payer mix for these test types? And do you have the staff capacity and the discipline for the compliance program? The strongest business case is for tests that change the same-day clinical decision.  Three actions this week  Pull your reference lab orders for the last 90 days and group them by test type. That list is your candidate menu, and it is real demand rather than a projection. Look up your exact analyzer model and test kit on the CMS waived test list at cms.gov before you take a single vendor call. Name who would own the compliance program, and ask them honestly whether they have the bandwidth to do daily QC consistently. Episode breakdown  Segment 1: the CLIA framework and the three complexity categories Segment 2: what certification actually takes, waived and moderately complex Segment 3: the four questions that decide it for your practice Resources  RECOVER Diagnostic  eligibility.natrevmd.com/recover-quiz-lp Practice Financial Health Dashboard for Physicians  eligibility.natrevmd.com/free-practice-financial-health-dashboard-for-physicians-natrevmd CMS waived test list  cms.gov, searchable by test name and manufacturer CMS Form CMS-116, the CLIA application Trusted resources library  natrevmd.com/trusted-resources/ Part 2: EP208, building the business case for in-office lab testing

  7. Aug 21

    #206 $12,000 a Month in Revenue You Do Not Actually Have

    Send us Fan Mail Before you build a business case for anything, a new hire, a second location, a new service line, three numbers have to be right. Payer mix. Net collection rate. AR days. Most owners have all three. Almost nobody has calculated them correctly in the last two years. This episode is how to fix that, in about twenty minutes, using your own system.   [Payer mix]  The payer mix on your billing dashboard is almost always built on charges, meaning what you billed. What you need is payer mix by collections, meaning what you actually got paid. Those two numbers are often meaningfully different. Pull payments received by payer over the last 12 months, divide each payer by total net collections, and that percentage is your real mix. Twelve months and not three, because open enrollment shifts and Medicaid redeterminations distort any shorter window.   [Net collection rate]  Gross collection rate compares you to your billed charges, a number nobody ever pays. Net collection rate compares what you collected to what you were contractually owed. Net collections divided by gross charges minus contractual adjustments. Discretionary write-offs, bad debt and charity, do not belong in that adjustment figure, because including them overstates the rate. Most well-run practices land between 95% and 98%. Under 90% is a red flag. Above 99% usually means contractual adjustments are being under-written.   [AR days]  AR balance divided by average daily charges over the last 90 days. Lower is generally better, but the blended number hides the story. Split insurance from patient, then look payer by payer. Under 35 days total is healthy. Medicare should sit at 20 to 28. Medicaid at 35 to 60. Patient AR above 40 days means balances are not being collected at the point of service. Any payer trending up for three consecutive months is worth a conversation.   [Why this matters for a business plan]  A 10% shift toward Medicaid lowers your blended rate per visit by $8 to $15 depending on specialty. In a 30,000-visit-per-year practice that is $240,000 to $450,000 of annual revenue difference, and it is completely invisible if you are using charge-based payer mix. A practice modeling at 96% when the verified rate is 92% overstates revenue by four cents on every dollar. On $300,000 a month that is $12,000 a month that does not exist. And a plan built on 30-day AR while the practice actually runs at 52 days has a cash flow gap in the first 60 to 90 days that the plan never accounts for. That gap shows up as a cash crisis, not a revenue problem.   [Three actions this week]  Pull payer mix by collections: 12 months, by payer, as a percentage of net payments  Pull your net collection rate: net collections divided by gross charges minus contractual adjustments, 12 months, run 90 days in arrears  Pull AR days for your top four payers, insurance and patient separately, with a 3-month trend direction on each  If you cannot pull any of these cleanly from your system, that is the first thing to fix, not the business plan. A plan built on numbers you cannot verify is not a plan. It is a guess with formatting. And if you can pull them and the numbers surprise you, that surprise is worth more than any plan you would have built without looking. Take them to your accountant and your billing manager before you build anything else.   [Episode breakdown]  00:00  The three numbers  00:40  Why this matters before you build anything  02:30  Payer mix: what it actually is  05:10  The calculation that matters  06:40  Why 12 months and not 3 or 6  08:20  Net collection rate: the formula  11:00  How to pull it correctly  13:10  What a healthy number looks like  15:00  The number most practices are using is not this  17:00  AR days: insurance versus patient  19:20  What AR days does to a cash flow plan  21:30  What to do before you build anything  23:00  Next week on EP207 Practice Financial Health Dashboard for Physicians  The workbook version of this episode. Enter your payer mix, net collection rate and AR days and see each one against benchmark, in one place.  https://eligibility.natrevmd.com/free-practice-financial-health-dashboard-for-physicians-natrevmd  RECOVER Diagnostic  Four minutes. Shows you which part of the revenue cycle is leaking before you go pull anything.  https://eligibility.natrevmd.com/recover-quiz-lp  30-Day Revenue Recovery Plan  For practices that already know something is off and want a sequence to work through rather than a diagnosis.  https://eligibility.natrevmd.com/nrc/-30day-revenue-recovery-plan  EP204: The Hidden Cost of Running Your Practice Without a Business Plan  The episode this one builds on. Why the plan matters before we talk about the inputs.  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/204-the-most-expensive-thing-in-your-practice-is-an-open-note/id1624182351?i=1000783299856 EP207: coming next week  What happens when these three numbers are quietly off in the optimistic direction.  https://natrevmd.com/podcast/

  8. Aug 18

    #205 Your Practice Can Be Profitable and Still Run Out of Money

    Send us Fan Mail A practice hired a provider in January. The hire was right and she was generating revenue from day one. By March the practice was sixty thousand dollars short and could not make payroll, because nobody had modeled what cash looks like in month two when you are carrying a full salary and the claims are still in the pipeline. This episode builds the model that would have caught it, and it is not the binder kind.  In this episode:   The seven moments when a practice actually needs a financial model The six components that matter, and the ones you can skip How to calculate net revenue per visit and why everything else depends on it The cash flow projection that shows what a profit and loss statement cannot Break-even, translated into a daily schedule number The five numbers each seat in the practice needs to see RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE  1. Practice Financial Health Dashboard (free Excel workbook)  The workbook version of the model in this episode. Revenue per visit, the fixed and variable expense split, a 24 month cash flow projection with the payment lag already built in, and the break-even math. You enter your numbers, it does the arithmetic.  eligibility.natrevmd.com/free-practice-financial-health-dashboard-for-physicians-natrevmd  2. The RECOVER Diagnostic (two minutes)  A short set of questions about how your practice runs. At the end you get a read on where the revenue is leaking and which fix we would put first if it were our practice.  eligibility.natrevmd.com/recover-quiz-lp  3. Protecting Your Visits From Downcoding (free live session, Wednesday August 26, 4:00 to 5:00 PM CST)  Stephanie Hilliard, CPC, on keeping visits from being downcoded and documenting medical decision making that supports a successful appeal. Every registrant gets the physician toolkit: the 90-Second MDM Note Builder, the Is This Really a Level 4 annotated casebook, an EHR SmartPhrase starter pack, the MDM or Time decision card, and the Hidden Work reference.  eligibility.natrevmd.com/em-downcoding-webinar  4. The 30-Day Revenue Recovery Plan (free PDF)  If the model says the practice should be fine and the cash still is not there, this is the first month of fixes we run, sequenced so you are not repairing six things at once.  eligibility.natrevmd.com/nrc/-30day-revenue-recovery-plan  SYSTEM 1: WHEN A PRACTICE ACTUALLY NEEDS A PLAN  Four triggers, not a continuous ritual. Starting the practice, adding a provider, opening a second location, adding a service line, seeking financing, a partnership or buy-in, and a sale or transition. The one owners skip most often is adding a provider, because the hire feels like a revenue decision. In the first sixty to a hundred and twenty days it is a cost decision: the salary starts on day one, the claims do not pay for thirty to forty five days, and full schedule utilization takes another sixty to a hundred and twenty days after that.  SYSTEM 2: THE SIX COMPONENTS THAT MATTER  The clinical model sets the ceiling on revenue. The revenue model converts capacity into cash through payer mix and net collection rate. The expense structure separates the fixed floor from the variable layer. The cash flow projection makes the payment lag visible month by month, which is what reveals a profitable practice running out of money. The break-even analysis turns the whole model into one daily schedule number. And the KPI dashboard is what keeps the plan alive after it is built.  SYSTEM 3: WHAT MAKES IT A DECISION TOOL  Three scenarios instead of one, and the downside case is the one that sets your reserve requirement. Stress tests on every assumption, because knowing which ones are high-sensitivity is how you know what to watch after launch. And an operating translation, so the model becomes three or four numbers each person in the practice can act on rather than a file nobody opens.  THE CALCULATION, WORKED IN FULL  Net revenue per visit $130.63 net revenue per visit  Break-even, for a practice with $180,000 in monthly fixed expenses:  $180,000 / $131 net revenue per visit = 1,374 visits per month  1,374 / 22 working days / 2 providers = 31 visits per provider per day to break even  THREE ACTIONS THIS WEEK  1. Calculate your net revenue per visit.   2. Calculate your break-even visit count. Total fixed monthly expenses divided by net revenue per visit, then divided by working days and providers. That is your daily target.  3. Before any significant decision this quarter, sketch a 90 day cash flow. New expense from day one, revenue with the payment lag applied. If the balance goes negative, you now know the reserve required to fund through it.  EPISODE BREAKDOWN  00:00 The hire that nearly broke a practice  00:40 What a business plan actually is  02:30 System 1: the four triggers  08:00 System 2: the six components that matter  09:30 Net revenue per visit  13:00 The cash flow projection  15:30 Break-even as a daily number  18:00 System 3: three scenarios  19:30 Stress-testing assumptions  21:00 The five numbers each seat needs  23:00 What to do this week

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About

Medical billing tips for healthcare professionals — by healthcare professionals.  This podcast is here to help private practices get paid what they’ve earned. We share real-world strategies for accurate coding, smoother billing workflows, and fewer denials — all from a team that’s been in your shoes. Whether you’re just getting started or trying to tighten up your revenue cycle, you’ll get practical advice you can actually use. Join the conversation in our Facebook Group: NatRevMDLearn more at www.natrevmd.com

Information

  • Creator
    NatRevMD
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    213
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 NatRevMD
  • Show Website
    NatRevMD

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