039 - Can You Hear Me Better?

In this Money Tree Series Episode #10, you'll learn about 3 ways that durable medical equipment (DME) expenses affect your managed care practice. A DME is any equipment used in the home as an aid to improve quality of life and most insurance companies will have funds set aside for patients who may need them. I’d also invite you to hear the sound quality of my new home production studio! 

Download the money tree diagram here to visualize the role DMEs play.

Don’t forget that Coach JPMD helps physicians go from overwhelmed to confident while increasing their income in 90 days or less. Book a call using this link to learn how you can decrease your stress and earn more. My goal is to help you to understand the business of medicine so you can Practice Impossible.

Show Notes

 Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans. 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Coach JPMD (00:00.814)
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the Practice Impossible Podcast with your host, Coach JPMD. That's me. And today's episode is the Money Tree series. As you know, when you hear that sound, we're going to talk about money. But before we do that, I wanted to know if you can hear a difference. Can you hear me better in this episode? So, I learned early on in podcasting that the sound that we produce

in our podcast shows are probably one of the most important things that you can do. you've heard stories or you've heard podcasts that had bad audio, you heard movies that had bad audio, and you almost don't want to watch those movies because it just doesn't sound right. So take a quick listen for a couple of seconds to this episode and then go to episode number one and listen to the difference.

We're in a new recording studio over at the new house or at my new house and I'm going to send some pictures on Instagram and show you some of the progress that we've made. Still some work to do. So, but I did want to get this episode out on DME's and wanted to talk about durable medical equipment expenses and how they affect the payment tree. So this is not the most exciting topic in medicine and maybe that's why I procrastinated doing it, but

I have to do it. So let's get it out of the way and it's in the money tree. So I'd like to discuss three things that are important in DME expenses in relation to Medicare Advantage plans. So number one, DME expenses are generally taken out of your managed care panel or managed care funding as a specialist would take funding out of your population pool. And so it acts like a fee for service company.

So what is the DME? Durable medical equipment are canes, CPAP machines, walkers, oxygen. And typically patients are allowed a certain number or a certain amount of durable medical equipment costs per year. And that's dictated by the plan and dictated by the benefits that are offered. And there sometimes is a copay for those durable medical equipments. So if a patient fractures their arm or has a hip surgery and needs walkers or a wheelchair,

Coach JPMD (02:24.278)
And those expenses come out of your capitation, just like a specialist or other expenses would. So number two, DME providers are limited in the HMO world or the Medicare world. Because you have tons of durable medical equipment companies out there, but not all of them will be contracted with that Medicare Advantage plan. just understand that there are limitations in providers that are in network with durable medical equipment.

Patients obviously can purchase these equipments outside of the plan and then that wouldn't come out of your expenses. So just understand that. And number three, bulk purchasing through your IPA or MSO can save you money and increase your profits. So what does that mean? So in our group, we have a large group and we have a buying power that enables us to purchase glucometers as well as test strips.

for our patients that are diabetic. So we purchase them at a discounted rate that is less than the rates or the expenses that would come out of the insurance funding at the pharmacy. So let's say they go to a local pharmacy and that pharmacy charges $75 for their glucometer and another $50 for the test strips. Well, we might be able to get those test strips in that same glucometer.

for $25. So we would then purchase those glucometers and test strips and patients would come to our office and not pay us for those things because that becomes a service that we provide to them and thus saving whatever the difference is that they would go to the pharmacy for. So that's how bulk purchasing through your IPA or through MSO can help you save money. So if you want to see some of the things that we've been talking about,

Go to www .coachjpmd .com slash money tree and you'll get an idea of where we are and leave a comment. Tell me what you think about the audio. I know this is a shorter episode and like I said, it's not my favorite, but it's something that I had to do. It's in the money tree. So let's get that out of the way and hopefully the audio quality will continue to improve. And we really appreciate you listening and encouraging us to continue.

Coach JPMD (04:50.878)
and take a listen to some other episodes that we have out there and we'll see you in two weeks.