Practice Assessment Services

Most practice owners can describe the symptom clearly: collections are slower than they should be, the schedule is full but revenue is flat, staff turnover keeps repeating, or the organization feels busier every year without feeling stronger. What is usually missing is agreement on the cause.

A practice assessment replaces opinion with evidence. It is an objective, third-party review of how the organization is actually performing across operations, finance, staffing and governance, so that improvement effort goes where it will matter rather than where it is loudest.

Common problems an assessment brings into focus:

• Revenue cycle leakage that is visible in the bank balance but not traced to a cause
• Patient access and scheduling constraints limiting capacity that already exists
• Staffing models that grew by addition rather than design
• Provider productivity that varies widely without a clear explanation
• Workflow and technology that staff work around rather than with
• Compliance and risk exposure nobody has recently reviewed
• Leadership structures where accountability is assumed rather than assigned

• Financial performance has drifted and the reason is not agreed on
• The practice is preparing for growth and wants to know what will break first
• Owners are considering a transition, partnership or sale and need an honest baseline
• A new administrator or physician leader has inherited the organization and needs an objective picture
• Improvement initiatives keep starting and stalling
• The leadership team wants an independent view rather than an internal one

An assessment is also the lowest-commitment way to begin working with an outside advisor, because it produces a concrete deliverable rather than an open-ended relationship.

Assessments evaluate eleven areas of the organization: practice operations, revenue cycle performance, patient access, scheduling and capacity, financial performance, staffing and workforce, provider productivity, patient experience, compliance and risk, technology and workflow, and leadership and governance.

The breadth is deliberate. Problems in a medical practice rarely stay in one department: a scheduling constraint shows up as a productivity problem, a staffing gap shows up in the revenue cycle, and a governance gap shows up as initiatives that never finish. Reviewing the areas together is what makes the causes visible.

• Assess. Review operations, financial performance, workflow and organizational structure, and gather perspective from the people doing the work.
• Advise. Identify barriers to performance, then rank opportunities by likely impact rather than by ease.
• Execute. Deliver a detailed report, prioritized recommendations and a practical roadmap for improvement.
• Improve. Where the practice wants support carrying the roadmap out, the findings feed directly into a practice management consulting engagement.

Every assessment concludes with a detailed report, prioritized recommendations and an actionable improvement roadmap. The intent is that leadership finishes the engagement knowing not only what was found, but which two or three things to address first and who owns them.

The deliverable is written to be usable by the people who have to act on it, rather than as a document that demonstrates how much analysis was performed.

Assessments are commissioned by practices experiencing operational challenges, preparing for growth, evaluating performance, or seeking an independent third-party view. See how this applies to medical practices, healthcare organizations, and practices preparing for growth, transition or sale.

Where the findings raise questions of direction rather than execution, strategic advisory services take the work forward.

In my 30 plus years of experience in healthcare, I have not found anyone with better instincts, deeper insights, and analytics to back up his proven methods for organizing, structuring, restructuring, and execution of transformative ideas that actually work. Pullum Advisory Group gets it right every time with sound processes, well thought out ideas, and a revealing formal evaluation tool.

Christian Gitersonke
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, AR Rescue, Inc.

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