Who: Mary Pat Whaley
Blog: Manage My Practice
About the blogger: Whaley is practice administrator for Halifax Regional Medical Center, a hospital in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., where she manages primary care and occupational medicine clinics and a hospitalist group and physician billing office. She has spent more than 25 years managing physician practices in the private and public sector.
What makes this blog so fierce? Whaley likes to fix things, and that passion is reflected in information and resources that aim to help medical practice managers. She wrestles with the nitty gritty and hands out news you can use, such as what's covered in Medicare 2011 and how physician practices can deal with the changes. Few blogs surpass this blog's ability to teach practice managers how to optimize operations.
Focus: Resources for the medical practice manager. Topics covered include Medicare reimbursement, EMR and day-to-day operations.
Quote: On how to know when your practice is ready for EMR: "You are not overwhelmed on a day-to-day basis. If your practice isn't running well without an EMR, it is not going to run better with an EMR. If you are having operational issues, consider having a consultant help you set up new processes to handle the hurdles you're facing now. The EMR does not fix operational issues, with the possible exception of lost paper charts."