Leadership, Telehealth Reimbursement, RPM, and Diversity – Insights from #MPEC20

Much like I did in my article “A Look at the Future of Medical Practices in the Next 12-24 Months“, I want to do a quick Twitter roundup of some highlights from the MGMA MPEC conference that recently happened.  Although, in this case, it’s going to be a broader potpourri of topics that we found interesting.  Leading off is an amazing session by Tasha Eurich that talked about leadership.  This is the session I want to go back and watch because Tasha had so many interesting comments that were based on real research.  Here are just two insights from Tasha’s talk:


This is such an important idea for a leader.  It’s a bit of a counterintuitive idea since Hollywood has made leaders out to be these tough people who never make mistakes.  However, when I look back at my career, I can see that the leaders I like the most and want to follow the most are those that are actively humble.  That definitely built trust in me as an employee.


This one hit home for me.  Giving compassionate feedback is hard.  Although, for me it also goes back to building the trust beforehand so that they know that any feedback is coming from a place of compassion and not judgement.  I don’t know.  I’m still working on this one.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.  I do love that MGMA had this leadership focused session.


This is a good reminder that the COVID-19 disruption is not over and it would make sense to make sure your medical practice is prepared. Are there things you can do if shutdowns happen again? This is an important question that hopefully we don’t really need to answer, but it’s good to be ready.


I loved this example that was shared in their efforts to do remote patient monitoring.  Plus, how ironic is it that having a nurse respond that they didn’t know actually drove patients to fill the inbox of the clinician they did know.  I actually think there’s a way around this if you prepare the patient the right way.  I’ve seen that in other companies.  However, there is something to say about the alerts being answered by someone that the patient knows and trusts.


This is a good reminder that diversity is valuable.  I was sorry to miss more of this session, but I was grateful for the reminder that many innovations come from talking with a diverse group of people.


I’m torn on this comment and would like more details. There are certainly two sides to the idea of new telehealth codes. First, it’s great to have new codes in this new world where telehealth is more widely adopted. Second, telehealth reimbursement is really complex and do we need more complexity? I’m hopeful that new codes mean less complexity, but we’ll see how that plays out.


What changes do you think will happen?  I do think the end of the year is going to have some major changes for telehealth reimbursement, but I think it’s also wise to expect that other changes will be made throughout 2021.  Billers are going to need some good go to sources for the latest telehealth reimbursement info as changes happen often next year.  At least that’s my prediction.


This question actually didn’t come from any session, but this was the question rolling around in my head as I heard them talking about telehealth reimbursement.  I think this is going to be a hard question to answer.  It’s also why it’s so important that we get telehealth reimbursement right.  If we don’t, there are going to be a lot of unhappy patients and they may leave their PCP to find a direct to consumer telehealth option.  I’m still not sure how this is going to play out.  Let me know what you think in the comments.  I hear the genie is out of the bottle, but there’s a lot of safety and security back inside that bottle.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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