Looking for a solution that helps alleviate administrative
tasks for your staff and also helps your
patients cover their out of pocket health care
expenses?
Find what you're looking for from CareCredit because
CareCredit is a credit card and more. It's
a helping hand for staff and a flexible
payment solution for patients. For over thirty years,
CareCredit, a Synchrony solution, has offered patients a
credit card with promotional financing options to get
the care they want while helping staff do
what they do best, provide care. To learn
more, visit carecredit.com
forward slash beckerspodcast.
This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast, and we are live at the Orthopedic
Spine and Pain Management Conference.
Today, we're going to talk about how financial
transparency helps transform the patient and practice experience.
Joining me for today's discussion is doctor Pamela
Mehta, a board certified orthopedic surgeon, chief medical
officer at the Good Feet Store. So doctor
Mehta, thanks for being here today, and let's
start off by having you introduce yourself a
little bit further and share more about your
role and organization.
Thank you so much for having me today.
It's been a great conference so far. I
just did a really fun session with CareCredit.
I am a board certified orthopedic surgeon. I
have been in practice for fifteen years, and
I started my own practice called Resilience Orthopedics
ten years ago.
I was in a position that I just
employed. Medicine wasn't working for me anymore.
I had two children that were fifteen months
apart, so I had a two year old
and a one year old when I decided
to go out into practice on my own
and decided to do that for a lot
of reasons. But one of them was that
I wanted to have an out of network
cash practice so that I would have more
time with my patients,
really give them that personalized
experience,
and not worry so much about the middleman
insurance companies when it comes to my practice.
I also
was trying to figure out a way to
prevent my own burnout, my staff's burnout,
really to promote that we should give good
patient care without those other things. And for
me, that meant an out of network cash
practice that keeps my overhead lower. I don't
have a lot of staff running around
getting authorizations
and fighting appeals, and so it really has
been a really good
model for me and for my patients.
I also am chief medical officer at the
Good Feet Store,
and I started Pinnacle Conference with two of
my other cofounders six years ago. It's a
national conference that we hold annually,
a multispecialty,
and we really teach women about the things
in medicine we do not learn in school.
A lot of business negotiation,
leadership, how to communicate as a woman. We
are now in our sixth year. We just
had our conference,
in May,
and we are now a jointly accredited program.
So we offer CME
for
many platforms
of education, digital, and live conferences. So that's
a little bit about me. Wonderful. Well, thank
you for being here. And let's start broad
strokes. What trends or shifts are you seeing
right now in the orthopedic space that you
think are most important for industry leaders to
pay attention to? I think that's a great
question. In orthopedics,
we have always prided ourselves on innovation
and always learning the best and newest techniques
for things.
I think when it comes to
old school technology
and joint replacement surgery,
we have really improved the pain management behind
it, and we are now seeing that patients
are not being admitted to the hospital
for three days or longer and going home
a week later with a lot of pain
medications.
We're seeing that patients are having these surgeries
done in an ASC setting.
They are being admitted for just a few
hours, and they're going home and they're getting
started on PT, which is really improving their
post op course and their quality of care
and just getting them moving and back to
the life that they enjoy living much faster.
What we're also seeing a lot of is
wellness. People wanna come in before they have
an injury, before they have arthritis hit their
joints. So they're really looking for regenerative medicine
and ways to preserve their joint.
We're seeing patients that are younger and younger
that are staying more,
active
and,
want to make sure that they can continue
that sport that they enjoy well into their
fifties, sixties, and seventies.
Absolutely. And as outpatient care continues to grow,
that's actually such a great segue. How do
you see the role of orthopedics evolving within
the broader healthcare ecosystem?
I think, as I mentioned before,
a lot more is being done at an
ASC. It's it's really now become rare to
do
orthopedic cases in a hospital setting where
patients are staying for multiple days. This has
really helped,
get our patients moving faster and be able
to also keep the volume so that people
aren't waiting many, many months and years for
their procedures to be done.
As I mentioned before, we're doing total knee
replacements, total hip replacements in an ASC. They're
getting out of there by if their first
start, they're getting out by noon, 1PM sometimes.
They've already worked with physical therapy.
They have their pain regimen.
They're going home with a block, so they're
comfortable.
We're just seeing more and more done in
the ASC, which is awesome for the patients,
and it's really great for the physicians too.
We don't have to worry about our patients
getting
infections in the hospital or taking a fall
or being up late at night because there's
a lot of beeping and IVs and nurses
coming in. So I think it's really improved
the quality of life for the patient.
Absolutely.
And financial transparency has become more of a
prominent part of the patient experience
with growing expectations from consumers and healthcare stakeholders
alike. So from your perspective,
what does true financial transparency look like in
practice?
And for leaders thinking about the business side
of care, especially in an increasing consumer driven
health care environment, how can financial transparency become
not just a patient win, but a competitive
advantage?
These are great questions. And for me, I
think financially financial
transparency
starts at the beginning.
So I think many patients do not understand
their health care insurance. I think many physicians
don't understand health care insurance too, which is
a problem, and I think we have to
attack that as well. But for me, in
my own practice, I'm very upfront about what
the costs are. I'm no different than a
hair salon. I have a menu of services.
We publish them. We tell the patient. They
pay at time of service.
We do all the billing for the patients
so that they don't need to worry about
what is gonna happen afterwards.
We take care of that for them. They
often recoup most, if not all, of the
cost.
It's just dependent upon their insurance that they
have. And to be honest, many people do
not understand that their in network and out
of network benefits are exactly the same and
that they may have a high deductible plan,
so they're paying anyway
regardless. They just don't have the transparency of
how much they're paying. But at my office,
they're no they know that right at the
get go.
I do work with in network
surgery centers and in network referrals like physical
therapy and MRI and other imaging
centers. And so that makes it easier for
the patient as well because they do know
that those costs are being dealt with through
their insurance. But their physician,
that relationship between me and them is not
hindered by any third party,
which has really helped that patient experience and
make it more personalized as well.
For leaders thinking about the business side of
care, we should all
every single physician,
any kind of medicine you're practicing,
should care about the business of medicine.
The reason we're all burning out and we're
being asked to do more and more for
less reimbursement is because we have not advocated
for ourselves, and we do not understand the
business of medicine.
It needs to start when we're in medical
school and when we're in training and when
we're out in practice.
Unfortunately, when I started my practice ten years
ago, there was no handbook for how to
start a practice. I just had to figure
it out on my own. And, unfortunately, ten
years later, it's still the case. There is
not a lot out there to help physicians
recognize
how they can start a practice, how to
run a practice, how to scale a practice,
how to grow your practice. And so I
think we need to, as physicians, be advocates
for that because if we don't have a
stake in that conversation, that conversation is happening
without us, and it has been happening without
us for years.
Absolutely. And then finally, as we wrap our
conversation, from your view, how does strengthening financial
communication help foster long term trust and loyalty
between patients and providers?
Well, I think that's the problem with medicine
is and health care insurance is that there
is not transparency. And so
patients aren't understanding
what they are going to be financially responsible
for until much later. We're the only industry
where you get paid for your service ninety
days later.
And where is that money coming from? How
is it being negotiated? Oftentimes, we don't know
the answers to these questions, which means the
patient doesn't know either. And so I think
the transparency from the beginning establishes trust between
the physician and the patient. And I think
offering tools to a patient like the CareCredit
credit card is a great way for them
to understand that there are ways to pay
for their health care, and there are ways
to get them their treatment faster and sooner
and with the physician that they want. And
so I do think these conversations need to
happen between the physician and the patient and
also between the office staff and the patient,
which requires some education
and for us to have some literacy behind
all of this as well.
Absolutely. Well, thank you, Doctor. Metta for your
time and insights today. We also want to
thank our podcast sponsor CareCredit.
You can tune into more podcasts from Becker's
Healthcare by visiting our podcast page at beckershospitalreview.com.