PS Newsletter – April 2017

PS Newsletter – April 2017

We hope this edition of the Practice Support Bulletin finds everyone well.  Congratulations to the individual in Riverton, UT who won our last practice support draw for a $100 Amazon gift card after filling out our short survey regarding new ligator feedback!  In this edition, we’re going to share some physician feedback from our annual survey and provide you with a couple of updated clinical forms.

Physician Feedback

Every year, CRH circulates a survey to garner feedback from our trained partners regarding their experience with the CRH O’Regan System and we wanted to share some of this feedback with you as it may be relevant to your practice.

With 50% of the population suffering from symptomatic hemorrhoids by age 50, many groups introduce hemorrhoid treatment into their practice to provide a greater continuum of care to their patients.  In our survey, physicians listed the following as the top 3 reasons they chose the CRH O’Regan System:

1. Ease of Use – the procedure takes about a minute to do, does not require an assistant, and has a very low complication rate.
2. Efficiency of procedure – the procedure is 99% effective in eliminating symptoms.
3. Ancillary revenue – the prevalence of hemorrhoids is high and the majority of physicians surveyed reported reimbursement rates of at least $200-$275 per banding appointment.
   When physicians were asked how many hemorrhoid banding procedures they perform per month on average, the most common response was 10-19:

In terms of how these patients are being generated, the physicians identified the following methods as the most important:­

1. Self-referral
   • This is all about putting effective processes in place to ensure that those patients who are diagnosed with symptomatic hemorrhoids during colonoscopy are educated about the procedure and have adequate opportunity to schedule a banding appointment.
2. In-office marketing materials
   • A simple way to get the word out to your patients that you offer a painless, non-surgical solution to their hemorrhoids.
   • Best part – CRH provides these materials absolutely FREE of cost!
   • We have lots to choose from so please contact me or see our website to determine what might work best for your practice.
3. Referring physicians
   • If not all of the physicians at your practice perform the procedure, do they refer to those who do?  Is your referral network aware that your practice offers hemorrhoid treatment?
   • The most significant way you can drive referrals for hemorrhoid banding from your referral network is by educating your referring physicians about the procedure.  I would be happy to have a quick call with you to discuss the resources we offer to assist with this and approaches that have worked well for other practices.

If your practice is looking to identify more patients for hemorrhoid banding, I would love to share with you some of the best practices CRH has developed over the years of running its own clinics and working with over 900 GI practices across the country.  Feel free to call or email me to discuss.

Updated Clinical Forms

Per physician request, we have updated our Chart Note to include an area to record which type of band (standard or latex-free) was used during the patient’s visit and we removed some of the line items practices don’t use.  Please click here to download the latest version of our chart note.

We have also updated our “Information for Cross Covering Physicians” form to include our Medical Directors’ contact information, who are available for physician consultation 24/7.  You can download the updated form here.

We have a number of additional helpful clinical forms and patient handouts available on our website. If you have questions about any of these materials or suggestions as to how we can make these resources more useful to your practice, please don’t hesitate to contact me.