ACC CV SUMMIT: How to Survive as a Small Practice

Friday, January 17, 2014 | Pat White

Dr. David May, President at Cardiovascular Specialists and Chairman of the ACC’s Board of Governors, opened the presentation by offering that small practices can take advantage of their size and ability to be nimble in response to market forces.

Dr. May provides six key advantages of being smaller is size:

1. All providers are engaged
2. Flat, rapid decision-making tree
3. Employees are invested/engaged/participate
4. Multiple models/similar practices with which to engage in best practices
5. We will be measured on quality and cost: cost is an advantage in small groups
6. Professional help readily available/inexpensive

Patrick White, President for MedAxiom, provided a definition for benchmarking data from your practice – internal and external, discussing how these measures are important to know where you stand in order to develop improvement strategies.

Dr. May feels that ratios and comparative analysis are very important as well as trends within a particular environment now versus a previous period of time. The measures vary but should be driven by your position in the market.

Quality in a small practice is different that in larger programs. Dr. May feels that voluntary registry participation rapidly improves physician quality performance, whether it’s NCDR, PRQS, Pinnacle or other quality programs. A small practice’s performance in these programs can be a key business negotiating tool as well as a differentiator against other providers.

Performance improvement in small practices is critically important because it’s the thing that most do not pay attention to. It can demonstrate that your practice does quality work and can be presented in order to participate in certain types of new programs like Accountable Care Organizations (ACO’s) and others.

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