HCC Coding is Good For Providers – Live with Dr. Kazi

HCC Coding is Good For Providers – up next on Live with Dr. Kazi, a new video series from Value-Based Care expert, Farshid Kazi, MD – Co-founder of DoctusTech, and passionate advocate for HCC coding and the Quadruple Aim.  In our second episode, Dr. Kazi shares ways in which HCC coding is uniquely good for doctors.

 

 

Watch the full HCC Coding is Good For Providers episode here!

 

 


I’m Farshid Kazi, co-founder of DoctusTech and an internist by training with a focus on palliative care.
I’ve built my career on population health out in California.
I’m excited to help other physicians looking to take the journey and leap into value-based care.

 

 

Levi: Hey, Dr. Kazi, we’re back with another episode of doctors tech thought leadership.

 

So today we want to talk about. Value-based care, as it, as it relates to specifically benefits to the doctors, how is this good for you and your associates?

 

Yeah. I think as a provider, Levi, we in the fee for service world or the traditional sense of healthcare, get paid only when a patient can come in for a billable diagnosis.

 

I can have you come in because you’re sick, and bill the insurance company. They say, here you go, Dr. Kazi, which is great, but there’s so many aspects to keeping patients healthy that are not billing. Worrying about your diet, worrying about loneliness, worrying about your mental health.

 

And some of those components, I, as a clinician, wish I had either the time or the reimbursement to reinvest into your care. So as physicians are starting to transition into value-based care, They are now being reimbursed to care for their patient in a holistic way. And those are, I think, fundamentally the reasons all of us clinicians—it doesn’t matter what specialty you’re in—went into medicine, is how do I make sure that I make you healthier over time?

 

And so value-based care allows me to do that, which is quite relieving in, in many ways.

 

HCC Coding is Good For Providers Financially

Levi: Now there’s, there’s the compassionate doctor side of the equation. And then there’s the aligned financial incentives side of the equation.

 

So as a physician owner, why is this good for you? Risk sounds risky. How does this work?

 

Dr. Kazi: Yeah. So everyone should not be taking risk upfront, which is a spot-on. It does sound risky, but if you want to practice medicine the way we all thought we would like to, when we were kids, value-based care is the right space to be in.

 

You don’t need to worry about the number of patients that you need to see every day. You need to worry about what their clinical outcomes are and by clinical outcomes, it means are they going to the hospital? Are they going to the ER, are they taking care of themselves? Preventatively?

 

And from a financial perspective, you’re getting a set run-rate on your revenue each year. So you don’t have to worry about how do I get my patients to come in, to see me. I’m rather getting a set budget that I can take care of my patient population.

 

And the ones that are sick and that you have a good relationship with, you’re going to be able to bring in more often than you would have been allowed in the traditional model.

 

So it helps you financially control your revenue. It helps you control your day to day. Decreases the burden of needing to see a ton of patients, which is why – number one reason people are burning out these days.

 

Levi: That makes sense. Okay. So at the risk of saying something that we would have to cut from this video later it seems like there’s potential financial upside for providers who enter into risk sharing contracts and code really accurately and document everything.

 

It seems to me that a doctor or practice could make more money and take better care of patients. Is that reasonable or is it, is it more profitable to just do fee for service?

 

Dr. Kazi: Yeah. It depends right? The clear answer is, it’s better to deliver good care and make profit, which is a hard thing to say.

 

And the traditional model, if you’re seeing 30, 40 patients a day, it’s really hard to stand by and say that you’re going to have better outcomes. And in fact, if you look at the data around. Patients that are in traditional Medicare versus patients who are Medicare advantage. They consistently outperform our quality metrics, meaning preventative screenings hospitalizations, total cost of care, which is just a reflection of outcomes on a clinical perspective.

 

So if you think about just where do you get your biggest bang for buck? It is on the value-based care side.

 

From a revenue perspective. Yes. If the doctor is taking better care of their patients, they will make more money, but that’s the right model of payment. Not necessarily just seeing more patients because you happen to be churning through a lot of sick patients.

 

HCC Coding is Good For Providers When They Work With Us

Levi: That makes sense. And just to put a, put a little commercial break onto this: On average, what do we see from a DoctusTech perspective on increased reimbursements when coding is done correctly and recapture rates are at 95%, what does that look like per doctor, per year?

 

Dr. Kazi: And that could look… it depends on the contracts and they vary quite a bit, but you can look at five to six figures, per doctor per year, on top line revenue increase- if you’re just appropriately documenting.

 

And that’s, again, not talking about up-coding, we’re not talking about making sure you’re increasing a panel, but you should get paid for doing all the hard work you are.

 

And that is done through better documentation, which is where DoctusTech helps.

 

 

 

Need to learn HCC coding, and don’t want to sit through another lecture? Click below to demo the DoctusTech app.

Need better RAF scores and recapture rates in your practice? Demo the DoctusTech integrated tools, and learn how to make your value-based care contracts more profitable. Schedule a demo today.

 

HCC Coding is Good For Providers Demo the tools that make HCC coding easy

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *