BHN Healthcare Blog

There’s no real love for waiting rooms. Call it the perpetual suspense, the white-coat syndrome lingers behind all modern chic designs. It’s time for practices to generate a greater practicality and explore deeper into human psychology behind waiting room worry.

I am the CEO of a service provider that provides diagnostic testing services to over 300 medical practices across the country. Our clientele ranges from the sole practitioner to extensive multi-specialty practices, to everything in-between. I am also the former Chief Marketing Officer for a top digital marketing agency in Chicago.

My staff and I are continually researching customers and prospects; therefore we are regularly reviewing medical practice websites. Through our work and research, we have made a few notes on where medical practices make mistakes with their sites. Below are a few of the most significant mistakes we typically see.

My company provides mobile urodynamics, anorectal manometry (ARM), and other diagnostic testing services, serving hundreds of practices and hospitals across the U.S.

We are considered a core service by many of our customers, but we are considered ancillary services by others.  We are regularly exposed to the ancillary medical services marketing efforts that practices pursue to attract patients to their ancillary services.  

Many marketing efforts are quite successful, while others yield almost no results. Below are a few of the ones we see working consistently.

My company provides advanced diagnostic testing services (primarily urodynamics testing, anorectal manometry testing, and other incontinence related services) to practices all over the country.

Through our work, we are exposed to practices at all profit levels from those that are hugely profitable to those that can barely pay the bills.  Based on our work, we have compiled a few ideas below that should help any practice be more profitable.  We hope that one or two will hit the mark for you.

Urodynamic services can be added to your medical practice to help increase your net income. The reason for this is that additional urodynamic services can increase your revenue by increasing the cost of the service and lowering reimbursements.

Before you decide to add extra services to draw in potential patients, you’ll want to ask yourself five distinct questions. These questions can help determine if adding additional urodynamic services can benefit your business.

The topic of urodynamic studies (UDS) before prolapse surgery is highly debated in urogynecology. There have been previous studies conducted on women who had prolapse and uncomplicated stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Currently, there is no possibility of a universal consensus for UDS before prolapse surgery in women who have concomitant symptomatic SUI. The issue is that there is currently no evidence that the surgery outcome will be altered or not by being given a UDS. Thus, we must test further using randomized studies to advance and see if UDS can be useful before prolapse surgery.

Preoperative UDS Should Be Performed

If a patient with a pelvic organ prolapse (POP) has either stages IIIa, IIc, or lp, she is more likely to have symptomatic vaginal bulging and asymptomatic for stress or urgency incontinence. This case is just one example of where preoperative USD should be performed before the prolapse surgery. It’s been found that POP and lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) usually coexist with each other. But, UDS involve objective assessments of any dysfunction in the urinary tract system. Some UDS could prevent and save people from POP. However, not many are willing to perform this option.

Urodynamic practices should be consistent throughout every medical practice. However, you will find that they often vary depending on clinics, companies, and between countries. This can often lead to procedures being uncomfortable and unnatural for patients, as there isn’t a set standard for explaining or performing the urodynamic testing. The ICS standardization steering committee has wanted to update the international continence society standard for making urodynamic testing consistent across all practices. They aim to add update and improve on testing through the use of reporting from patients after clinical care.

Patient Information & Preparation for Invasive Urodynamics

Before starting any urodynamic treatment, clinicians should prompt patients for past information, physicals, and prepare for the urodynamic treatment.

Urodynamic services provide valuable information when it comes to the urinary health of patients due to their interaction with medications, drugs, and other substances. However, some clinics doubt that urodynamic services make a difference in specific populations of people. To test this theory Suskind AM, Cox L, and Clemens JQ et al. (2017) decided to test the value of urodynamic services within an academic specialty referral practice. The objective of the study was to demonstrate that UDS services could provide useful information for correct medication doses in patients and other drugs.

Patients & Pre-screening

The perspective questionnaire was designed to determine the use of UDS in clinical practices. Each patient who was invited to be in the study was 18 years or older and were either male or female. Five clinics asked their patients if they wanted to participate in the study if they were coming for a UDS service. They were then prompted with a pre-questionnaire asking their race, gender, age, and if they had previously used UDS services. They were also asked if they had any history of pelvic radiation and neurological conditions.

Boosting your practice’s revenue requires you to add additional services for your patients. Some of these services should include nutrition, urodynamic testing, imaging, and an in-house pharmacy. By adding these services, you will better be able to provide your clients with better healthcare. So, how do you know that adding urodynamic services is going to be beneficial for your company?

We want to help you better understand how to give your patients enough services. Below, we will answer some questions regarding the addition of different services, especially urodynamics, and why they are good for you and your clients.

Urodynamic procedures can be scheduled for reimbursements through Medicare and other insurance companies. You will need to know the exact codes listed below in the article to help build a proper case for calculating how much you can be reimbursed for. The following information is a guide to help you estimate your reimbursement. However, not all reimbursements will be accepted. Contact your insurers for an assessment to check if you qualify for urodynamic procedure reimbursements. Each insurance office has strict policies and guidelines on whether you will get accepted or denied your reimbursement.