Private orthopedic practices are fighting an uphill battle. The fact is, it’s getting harder and harder to provide excellent care while managing rising costs and patient expectations in an evolving healthcare landscape.
In the face of these hurdles, it’s time to consider a new model for orthopedic practices, one that enables providers to keep delivering high-quality care while also opening new doors to revenue. To build your practice now and in the future, consider integrating ancillary services such as the Prescribe FIT Protocol into your practice’s offering.
Why Ancillary Services Just Make Sense
Ancillary services are programs you offer outside of orthopedic care in the traditional sense. Because musculoskeletal pain is so deeply tied to lifestyle factors, offering ancillary services that can support patients outside of the operating room can help influence better outcomes. They can help you address some of the most pressing challenges your patients face, including:
- The Orthobesity™ crisis
- A desire for more personalized care
- Barriers to receiving in-person care
In addition to the potential patient care impact, they also represent a significant opportunity to increase your practice’s revenue by providing solutions to the challenges your practice may be facing, such as:
- Declining reimbursements
- Provider burnout
- Vertical integration of care
For instance, the sharp rise in patients seeking virtual care during the pandemic resulted in new remote patient monitoring (RPM) codes which can be billed and reimbursed as ancillary services. In offering ancillary services to your patients, you can establish new revenue streams that can help you continue to build your practice and provide excellent care.
What is the Prescribe FIT Protocol?
Here are a few of the ways the Prescribe FIT Protocol can positively impact your patients and practice in the areas that matter:
The Orthobesity™ Crisis
It is widely known that obesity is a leading cause, or contributor to, musculoskeletal pain. But in the past, weight management was largely handled by primary care providers — if it was handled at all. The Prescribe FIT Protocol allows orthopedic physicians to take ownership of that important conversation. When you set a treatment plan or goal for your patients, the Prescribe FIT Protocol can be leveraged to help them manage or adjust their lifestyle habits to work toward better whole body health, which can not only reduce musculoskeletal pain but can also influence more optimal surgical outcomes.
More Personalized Care
Patients today want doctors who care about who they are and understand their needs. For busy surgeons, it isn’t always easy to foster those deep connections with patients. The Prescribe FIT Protocol’s virtual component gives doctors more access to patients — and vice versa. Through our remote patient monitoring program, patients receive the connection they crave and physicians are able to offer more personalized care based on real-time health metrics.
Barriers to Receiving In-Person Care
For many patients, taking time off work or finding a way into the doctor often isn’t feasible. Because of that, it can be difficult to track compliance with pre-surgery preparation or post-surgery recovery plans. The Prescribe FIT Protocol is built to connect with patients where they are, increasing access to care and reimbursable patient touchpoints.
Declining Reimbursements
The fact is that excellent care cannot happen without the money to do so. Because of the way the U.S. healthcare system is built, reimbursements are the key to practice success. With the Prescribe FIT Protocol, physicians can create recurring monthly insurance reimbursements for the following RPM CPT codes:
- CPT 99453: Initial setup visit to issue device and educate patient
- CPT 99454: Provide one or more devices to the patient and collect data
- CPT 99457: Initial 20 minutes of monitoring/communication time spent per patient
- CPT 99458: Additional 20 minute increments of monitoring/communication time spent per patient
The Prescribe FIT Protocol is covered by most major insurances, including Medicare and Medicaid. Prescribe FIT is designed to produce a net-positive monthly ancillary revenue stream for your practice, requiring no upfront capital investment. During initial implementation, we run a Coverage Analysis™ on your individual state commercial payer plans. Then before enrolling each patient, we perform Benefits & Coverage Eligibility (BCE)™ checks on individual patient plans.
Provider Burnout
Orthopedic practices are busier than ever. The post-pandemic surge of orthopedic appointments has slowed, but certainly not stopped. The combination of a full slate of surgeries and declining reimbursements can make the busy times feel a little frustrating at best, and lead to burnout at worst.
The Prescribe FIT Protocol is supported by a team of certified Health Coaches and U.S.-based clinical care coordinators who are knowledgeable and experienced in nutrition, physical rehabilitation, exercise and more. Once you have determined a care plan for a patient, they can take the lead on helping your patients implement it at home. With Prescribe FIT’s Health Coaches on deck to help manage the relationship and encourage compliance with your care plan, you can save your time and energy on what’s happening in surgery — or, your life outside of work.
Vertical Integration of Care
The ongoing vertical integration of care by larger health systems continues to be one of the greatest threats to private practices, including private orthopedic practices. While there can be many efficiencies associated with vertical integration of care, we believe the private practice can still offer a more community-focused care model.
The Prescribe FIT Protocol provides an answer to vertical integration by expanding the types of care available at an orthopedic practice to include lifestyle health and surgical optimization. Both areas of care could be found at a PCP, but we believe they can easily be kept in-house at an orthopedic practice, allowing you to receive reimbursement and tailor care to the results you’re trying to achieve. In a way, you can create your own kind of vertical integration that is custom to musculoskeletal outcomes.
Building a More Stable Future
The Prescribe FIT Protocol offers the potential for higher revenue, better patient experience and better patient outcomes. So of course we’re often asked, “what’s the catch?” But to that we say, “Does innovation need a downside?”
We believe that the Prescribe FIT Protocol has the power to positively change the way orthopedic care is provided, as well as positively influence the way it is seen by patients. We watch it work every day in the practices we partner with. It provides value by:
- Influencing more positive outcomes
- Helping ensure that patients receive equitable, personalized care
- Improving population health in your communities
- Improving patient experience and practice reputation
Our current healthcare system makes it hard to sustain excellent care, and we hope to challenge that status quo by providing a new path forward. But we also know that change isn’t easy, and it can be especially daunting when your practice has always gone about things a different way. Because of this, we work to make it as easy as possible for you to implement the Prescribe FIT Protocol in your practice. It takes very little time from the beginning of onboarding to the point where you’ll start seeing the value of our programs. Your success is our success, so your patients and your practice are our top priorities. Together, we can build a practice that is primed to provide excellent orthopedic care now and in the future.
Don’t miss out on the future of orthopedic care. Get in touch today to start building your practice with the Prescribe FIT Protocol.
Published on October 8, 2024
