Latest / Coffee Playdate Podcast with Dr. Olga Deengar / Problems Are Puzzles Ep 47: Emily Floyd on Pediatric Billing
Transcript
- Dr. Olga Deengar: Welcome to the Coffee Playdate Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Olga Deengar and I have a very special guest with me today, Emily Floyd. Welcome! Emily Floyd: Hi, thank you so much for having me. Dr. Olga Deengar: It's great to have you here, Emily. I have to ask, do you drink coffee? Emily Floyd: Absolutely. Every day. Dr. Olga Deengar: And how do you like your coffee? Emily Floyd: I'm pretty plain, I can drink it black or just with a little bit of cinnamon. If there's some real cream around, then that's kind of my indulgence. But a regular cup of coffee is is my go to. Dr. Olga Deengar: I love it. Do you like the flavored cream or just regular cream? Emily Floyd: Just plain Dr. Olga Deengar: Plain cream. Nice. Emily Floyd: All day plain Dr. Olga Deengar: Amazing. Well, get your coffee cup ready because we are starting with our first game. That's the Rapid Fire Questions game. I'm gonna ask you to choose between one answer or the other. You don't need to explain yourself, just go with your gut instinct. Right? First question: a pediatrician who documents beautifully. Or an insurance payer that responds quickly. Emily Floyd: Insurance that responds quickly. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yes. Next question Growing revenue or reducing administrative burden for pediatric practices? Emily Floyd: Growing revenue. Dr. Olga Deengar: Amazing. Next question: clean claims on the first submission or the satisfaction of overturning a difficult claim? Emily Floyd: First submission is always better, but there is real satisfaction that comes with a fight that you win. Dr. Olga Deengar: I love it. And the last question here leading from spreadsheets and KPIs or leading through culture, relationships, and mission? Emily Floyd: Culture, relationships and mission with the spreadsheets to back it up. Dr. Olga Deengar: You wish you could choose both of the answers. Yeah. They're all right. Emily Floyd: I know. I know, I do. They're tough choices. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yep. So the next game is take a sip. It's similar to the first game we just played, but this time we both answer, and if our answers match, we take a sip from our coffee cups. Emily Floyd: Okay. Dr. Olga Deengar: First question is a slow morning with coffee or productive early start to the day? Emily Floyd: Slow morning with coffee. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yes, me too. Cheers. Emily Floyd: Cheers. Dr. Olga Deengar: Great, next question, trying a new hobby or getting better at something you already love. New hobby, me too. I like the variety, Emily Floyd: New hobby. Yay. Dr. Olga Deengar: exploring different things. Emily Floyd: Mm-hmm. Same. Dr. Olga Deengar: Next question: sweet snack or salty snack? Emily Floyd: Salty. Dr. Olga Deengar: Salty snack, me too. Emily Floyd: Three for three. Dr. Olga Deengar: And the last question here, movie night or game night? Emily Floyd: Game night. Dr. Olga Deengar: I have to say movie night. Emily Floyd: All right. The streak is finished. Dr. Olga Deengar: Amazing. So I'd love for our listeners to learn a little bit more about you. can you tell us about yourself and the incredible work that you do? Emily Floyd: Sure, my name is Emily Floyd. I'm the founder and CEO of Altus Pediatric Billing. I have a little bit of an unusual background when it comes to medical billing. I actually got my MBA at Yale and then worked in corporate America for a while and thought I would keep going up that ladder, but this opportunity presented itself and it was really personal to me. My mother is a pediatrician. She owns an independent practice, and she started that when I was in high school. I saw her start that. I saw the struggles. I remember the late nights of trying to understand what was getting paid and what wasn't. And so when this opportunity came, I just felt like the the right thing to do and something I was really excited about. And 12 years, hundreds of pediatricians later, I am really lucky to do what I do. I love it. Dr. Olga Deengar: Wow, that's amazing. I love how you have that personal connection to the pediatrics world because I feel like that's one of the specialties in medicine that is oftentimes overlooked and underpaid. I mean, our pediatricians do so much for our kids. I've got three boys, they're all six and under. And Emily Floyd: my gosh. Dr. Olga Deengar: we would not be able to live without our pediatrician. She's amazing. Do you feel the same way? Emily Floyd: And they love what they do. They they love what they do. They love taking care of kids and they're not getting paid for for the work they're doing and that's that's what they need and so it's it's really rewarding work. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah. And so what kind of excites you every day to to go to work to be part of of the team and to lead such an incredible company? Emily Floyd: For me, when it comes to the clients that we're servicing, I think it's so important to find out what their goals are because everyone has different goals, whether it's opening another location or bringing on another provider and learning what those are and working with my team and the practice to come up with a plan to get there. It's so much more than just have an office visit, get paid for the office visit. It's what are we going to do when we recover all of the revenue that you are owed? And how are we going to make your life, your practice, your team better? And I love the success stories when people send them to me. I just love to celebrate with them because we're playing a tiny little part in helping keep these practices independent. Dr. Olga Deengar: I think it's a big part, not a tiny one. You're I mean, essentially you're helping the independent practices come up with a strategy of how they can optimize their billing. I mean, that's huge. Emily Floyd: That's the front end, but they're really the ones who do all the work. So it's great to be able to show them the data, to give them the plan, but I work with incredible practice owners and practice managers and leaders every day, and they're the ones who really get it done. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, that's amazing. So as you do this work, what kind of mindset do you need to carry forward each day? Emily Floyd: That's a great question. One thing that really guides me is this idea that problems are puzzles. So they're exciting. It's not something that you need to be worried about. It's not a crisis. It's something where, you know, okay, let's figure out what are the resources that we have, what are the resources that we need, what information do we know? What do we need? And let's make a plan. And I think as businesses and practices grow the complexity of the problems that you're solving. grows, but at the end of the day, if you can just think of it as a as a puzzle that needs to be solved, that's how I think about it and that just gets me excited instead of overwhelmed. Dr. Olga Deengar: So what are some of the challenges that you see in your practice? Emily Floyd: I think that, you know, one of the biggest problems that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the transition that I've had to make over the last couple of years from kind of founder, person doing a lot of the work, operator to an actual CEO mindset. I used to know everything that was going on, every decision that was made, I was part of it. Every problem that a client faced, I knew all about it and had a hand in solving it. But as we've grown to a team of 40 people, I don't have that luxury anymore. So it's really forced me to think about communication, to think about processes. How am I leading a group of people to represent my thought process and our brand really well? And then how do I trust that I've given them everything that they need? to go solve those problems when I can't be involved every day. It's been been a big challenge, but a lot of fun. Dr. Olga Deengar: what are some of those strategies that you've put into place? I mean, I'm sure you've had to delegate a lot of the different tasks. Emily Floyd: One of the things that we did put into place, you mentioned the word visionary. So one of the things that we did put to put into place was the EOS, traction EOS framework. so that just gave us kind of an operating system for how we meet and solve problems as a company. And it it kind of has what I've spent a lot of time on is making sure that we have all of the processes and procedures documented so that any problem That we solve over and over and over again, we don't need to think about. We have it on autopilot. We've got a list, we know how to solve it. And we're not trying to come together to just figure out how to solve it. Because there are new problems that arise all the time. Let's spend our energy on those. That's been two really big, two really big pieces of it. And I would say the third really big piece has just been I have great leaders. My leaders are incredible. but making sure that they had very clear routines and expectations so that they could what they were spending their time on really aligned with what the the bigger company needed. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, it sounds like you have an amazing team, which is exactly what every leader and visionary needs. Emily Floyd: Yes, I'm very, very lucky. Dr. Olga Deengar: Now I wanted to ask about some of the challenges from working with the insurance companies. and how do you navigate them? Emily Floyd: I think the biggest challenge is that you know, we get a lot of things, a lot of denials or just a lot of communication from them that is something that tells us that they're not gonna pay for something. So the biggest challenge is it's not uniform. So sometimes it is very clear and it says like, nope, this is because this person wasn't covered. or it can be something as easy as this is bundled with another service. But the problem is, even when it's straightforward, you can't take that at face value. You still have to investigate. I think the biggest challenge then is making sure that everyone stays really curious. Hmm, this seems weird, instead of taking it at face value, and then spending the time and the energy to try to figure out what they're really saying, and then have the tools to back up your argument and go and appeal it. And that can be really hard for billing teams if they don't have the support behind them. They don't have the experience to know that, no, this needs to be challenged. And there's not insurance companies don't answer their phones anymore. So you cannot get someone on the phone. Sometimes you're holding for two, three hours. I regularly see people say, like, I've been on hold for three hours. but you've you gotta be patient, you gotta be curious, and you've gotta have that mindset of no, I'm absolutely going to get this paid. And I'm not gonna take what you your communication and what you're telling me at face value. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, you must have a lot of patience and your team must have a lot of patience because it's so frustrating like waiting for someone to pick up on the other line for like two hours. That's crazy. Emily Floyd: You kind of mentioned it at the beginning with, you know, the the clean claim or win the good fight. And winning the good fight is so rewarding. And every single person on my team knows that they're fighting for kids when they fight for an insurance payment. They know that they're fighting for their client and it's because they've been taking care of kids. And so I think that you get the win of supporting that office, but you also get that win of nope, I put together my argument and I fought really hard and I got this claim paid. And it doesn't matter if it's a big claim, if it's a small claim, there is a lot of satisfaction in that. So yes, they have a lot of patience, but it's also a game that they get to win at the end of the day. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, I love thinking about it as a game. That's that's really great perspective for sure. Emily Floyd: Makes it a little less frustrating. Dr. Olga Deengar: It's true. Do you get to celebrate the the small ones or even the big ones as well? Emily Floyd: Yep, absolutely. my team is fully remote, so we have to have kind of some online community and we have a shout-outs page, we have a wins page, we've started putting into our quarterly routines, send us your biggest wins of the quarter so we can celebrate them on our about to be published SharePoint sites. And so I think that it helps the person get recognized, but it also inspires other people to think, well when I find that myself in that situation. I'm gonna be able to go and fight the same way or pull some of the same tools out of my toolkit. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, that's amazing. I love that you have the community. Like even though everybody's working remote, everyone still has a way to stay in touch and celebrate each other. That's really beautiful. Emily Floyd: I'm I think I said it earlier, but I'm so lucky to have the team that I have. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah. And I wanted to ask along those lines, can you tell me about a time where you've gone above and beyond for your team or your family, your loved ones to really create an extraordinary meaningful experience? Emily Floyd: I think probably a good example of that would be with my leadership team. We started last year, we had our very first leadership team retreat, and we brought all of the billing managers and our operations manager and our data manager all together in the same place. And when I was planning that, I just wanted everything to feel celebratory. So we picked, we did it in Dallas because I'm from Dallas. So I had an idea of okay, how can I make this happen? But hosting them here was wonderful because we picked a really fun hotel that's in downtown Dallas. We did you know, a cocktail making class. We did a big celebratory dinner at one of, you know, a great restaurant here in Dallas, and it just we spent a little bit of time, of course, on our strategic planning and the things that we needed to spend time on, but it was a really great tool for recognition to say you've done a really great job. I appreciate everything that you do as we grow and build this company. And everyone felt really special and built really strong relationships with each other because we got to have that time together and it just felt special and not like a corporate retreat. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, that's amazing. Do you think you'll have more of these in the future? Emily Floyd: We are going again in January and we will be in Nashville this time. Dr. Olga Deengar: sweet. Emily Floyd: Everyone voted and that's that's where they picked. So that's what we're gonna do. Dr. Olga Deengar: that'll be so fun. Now, Emily, I know you've mentioned a few things already, but is there one piece of advice that you would give someone who's an entrepreneur who's just stepping into a similar space as you? Emily Floyd: Don't wait to be ready. If you think that you're going to create the perfect plan or everything's gonna magically come together, it's not going to. If you think one day you're gonna know more than you do today and then you'll be ready. We don't know what we're doing all the time. You just gotta jump in, take the step, make some sort of progress, and keep in mind that done is better than one day I'll be ready to take that step. Get it done. It won't be perfect. That's okay. And keep going. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yes, taking that leap, taking that first action. It takes a lot of courage to do that, but I think once you do it, once you get over that hump, you kind of feel a little bit of relief and and you can actually pursue your mission, what you're meant to do. Emily Floyd: Yes, absolutely. Dr. Olga Deengar: Amazing. Now I always ask about a book recommendation. Do you have a book recommendation for our listeners today? Emily Floyd: I do. One book that I find really inspiring is 10X is Easier Than 2X by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. It is really inspiring because it tells stories of people who dream who had really big dreams, and so it encourages people to dream big and it helps you think about how do you create systems that go beyond yourself. So I think it's really relevant whether you're just starting out to kind of think that way, even though you're not there yet. Or if you're kinda in the middle of it, how are you getting to that next step? But it's a great tool for that too. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, I love that book. I have it in my library here. I Emily Floyd: Perfect. Dr. Olga Deengar: think I must have read it like three or four times. And every time you read a book, you just get something new from it, like another golden nugget. Emily Floyd: It's almost like it's meant to be. Like you read you get what you need at the time. And then when you're reading it another you know, later, a year later, there's something else that speaks to you based on where you are in the in your journey. And that's I actually just recently re picked that up for a the second or third time and that's that's why it's definitely top of mind right now. Dr. Olga Deengar: Yeah, I love that. That's so true. And just as we wrap things up here, I want to make sure our listeners have a way of contacting you if they want to learn more about pediatric billing and how how can they do that? Emily Floyd: They can always find us online at altuspediatricbilling.com, but anyone can email me at any time too. It's emily@altuspediatricbilling.com I am always happy to talk about any problem that an independent pediatrician is facing, whether they're a client or not. So I encourage anyone to reach out anytime. And I should also say that I recently, we recently put out a book. Call Pediatrician's Guide to Getting Paid. We send it to everybody who asks for free. So shoot me an email and we will get it sent out to you right away. because I do think that we've got to take care of the independent physician community, and I'm happy to share my experiences with anybody. So Emily at altuspediatricbilling.com, please anyone can reach out anytime. Dr. Olga Deengar: That's so wonderful. Thank you for mentioning that. And I think that'll be a great resource for the pediatricians around the US, for sure. Emily Floyd: I hope so. I'm waiting for those wins to start coming in. We just started shipping the book about a little over a month ago. So waiting to to hear some good success stories there. Dr. Olga Deengar: Congratulations, that's great. Emily Floyd: Thank you. Dr. Olga Deengar: Well, thank you so much, Emily, for being on the Coffee Playdate podcast. It was such a pleasure speaking with you today, and I wish you all the best. Emily Floyd: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Have a great day. Dr. Olga Deengar: Thank you.