Overview: About Emergency Medicine Professionals
Emergency Medicine Professionals, P.A. (EMPros) provides clinical services for AdventHealth’s North Division in Florida. Founded in 1976, this independent and fully democratic practice is considered a leader in the region, serving nearly 300,000 patients a year across seven facilities. For more than 25 years, Ventra Health has provided EMPros with a full range of customized revenue cycle services. The practice credits this partnership with enabling them to remain profitable as an independent medical group, finding strategies to counteract increasing denial rates, payer payment delay tactics, and even the decline in Medicare reimbursement.
Beyond the Basics
The ability to stand firm against market headwinds and continue to deliver exceptional care is top of mind for EMPros, and it is a goal that has become increasingly difficult to achieve in recent years. Early on, reliable billing practices were enough to stay competitive. Now, EMPros needs to see around corners and proactively find ways to avoid pitfalls and increase revenue.
“The cost of doing business has become so high for physician groups,” says AJ Hobbs, Client Success Vice President for Ventra Health. “Over our long partnership, we have evolved our services beyond basic billing and coding to make sure we’re actively helping EMPros mitigate payer and industry challenges. We examine the revenue cycle from every angle, finding opportunities to improve processes and increase revenue.”
Hobbs coordinates multi-department support for EMPros to address issues that impact their revenue.
When the 2023 AMA Evaluation and Management coding changes were announced, EMPros partnered with their Ventra Client Success team to understand the potential impact to their revenue cycle and build a plan to adapt. They worked with Ventra’s Provider Education team to train their physicians on the new AMA expectations around chronicity and acuity. That team worked directly with EMPros physicians, reviewing a sampling of their charts to show where additional documentation could have led to increased reimbursement, as well as providing feedback and training on subjects such as higher acuity diagnosis criteria and how to document their MDM (medical decision-making) process.
Concurrently, EMPros was given access to vSight™️, Ventra’s data & analytics platform, to ensure their entire revenue cycle is properly managed and running smoothly. The EMPros practice leaders now had real-time access to monitor the performance data metrics that matter most to them, including Daily Cash Deposits, Acuity percentages across providers, Held Charts, and payer behavior and denial trends.
EMPros and the Ventra Client Success team worked together to build business plans around this data. They maintained weekly meetings to proactively monitor EMPros’ business and partnered closely with the Ventra Service Delivery team to identify new revenue-generating opportunities that will keep EMPros ahead of the curve and ready to deal with any future industry challenges.
Eighteen months after the 2023 AMA E/M coding changes went into effect, EMPros not only avoided the anticipated RCM disruption but actually delivered an increase in RVUs.
Overall, as a result of Ventra’s high-touch partnership, EMPros’ 2023 collections increased materially compared to 2022 despite Medicare rate cuts and broader industry challenges. Collections Per Visit are up a remarkable 8%.
Collections Per Visit are up 8% for EMPros—despite Medicare rate cuts and other broad industry challenges.
“Our collaboration with Ventra Health has strengthened our documentation practices and, in turn, boosted our reimbursements,” says Dr Justin McNamee, Medical Director for EMPros. “By working closely with our physicians, we’ve embraced proactive strategies—like regular chart reviews and specialized education—that keep us ahead of industry changes. This partnership, coupled with our commitment to precision in documentation, has been key to driving both our financial success and the high standard of care we provide.”
Two-Way Partnership
As a longstanding client, EMPros has become integral to Ventra’s operations, as well. EMPros is a valued member of Ventra’s Client Advisory Board, providing input and insight into solutions that will improve performance for all Ventra clients.
“Ventra and EMPros have been solving problems together for more than 20 years,” Hobbs says. “As a strong model for other independent practices, their insights and experiences help us ensure we can continue to meet the needs of independent practices for decades to come.”
Download Success Story as PDF“Our Ventra team makes sure we have everything we need to hit our financial goals. Their white-glove approach allows us to trust that they are actively managing our revenue cycle. That gives us the space to focus on what matters most—the care of our patients.”
Dr. Justin McNamee, Medical Director for EMPros
