Yes, you can provide as much data as you have access to and are able to provide.

Yes, you can either email your completed benchmarking survey to data@aaoe.net or upload your survey into AAOE’s secure portal. Please contact data@aaoe.net for upload instructions. Upon receipt of your survey, AAOE will input your data into the AAOE Benchmarking Survey and you will receive free access to the Benchmarking Results when they are published.

No, the OrthoForum does not transfer benchmarking surveys directly to AAOE. OrthoForum and OrthoConnect practices can submit their surveys to AAOE, however. You can either email your completed benchmarking survey to data@aaoe.net or upload your survey into AAOE’s secure portal. Please contact data@aaoe.net for upload instructions. Upon receipt of your survey, AAOE will input your data into the AAOE Benchmarking Survey and you will receive free access to the Benchmarking Results when they are published.

Yes, you can choose to submit benchmarking surveys for each division or practice within your organization. Please contact data@aaoe.net and ask for a separate benchmarking survey link for each of your divisions/practices. When the Benchmarking Results are published, you will be provided with login information specific to each division/practice so that you can view Results at that level.

Yes, when you submit your benchmarking survey to AAOE, your data is protected. Specifically, your data is mapped into the AAOE Benchmarking Survey and stored in a secure database; access to the online Benchmarking Results is password protected and permission driven; only you can see your practice’s data. Comparison benchmarks are presented in aggregate; and results are hidden when fewer than five practices meet established criteria.

You can skip questions related to physician and provider Work RVUs if the data is not available to you or if it is not a metric tracked by your practice.

Annual Practice Compensation is the salary and wages paid to a physician or provider directly by the practice. Total Practice Compensation includes Annual Practice Compensation and earnings received from other sources, including hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), and real estate.

The NPI number is used as an identifier that allows tracking for individual providers across years. Other unique identifiers can be used, such as initials, if a practice chooses not to provide an NPI number.

No, all Work RVUs should reported with the GPCI set to 1.000 so that all data is reported consistently across providers and practices.

Please enter 0.5 as the full-time equivalent (FTE) value in the FTE field and then the total gross and net collections, visits, surgeries, Work RVUs, etc. performed during the period. The values will be adjusted based on the FTE values when the benchmarking results are generated.

Either option is appropriate as long as you base all gross and net collection reporting on either service date or post date consistently across all data elements requesting collections data.

For the purposes of the Benchmarking Survey, there is no difference between these two titles. Both titles refer to the staff person who reports directly to the practice’s board.

The Employees section is divided in the following categories: Revenue Generating Staff, Clinical Support Staff, Patient Care Support Staff, Business Operations Staff, and Taxes and Benefits. Within the Revenue Generating Staff, Clinical Support Staff, and Patient Care Support Staff categories, data entry is further divided to collect relevant data for each line of service.

As a result of this structure, employees roles may appear in multiple sections based on whether they employee is able to bill for their services and/or the line of service to which the employee contributes their time. The item level definitions provided in the survey are intended to clarify the employee data being collected within each section and for each employee role.

Employee FTE and wages may already be allocated across lines of service (e.g., X-Ray, PT/OT, MRI) in your practice’s chart of accounts. If so, please enter data according to that allocation. For practices who have not created this allocation in their chart of accounts, FTE allocations can be made based on the percentage of time employees work in each of the service areas. For example, an employee who works half of their time in orthopedics, 30% in X-Ray, and 20% in DME would have FTE values of 0.5, 0.3, and 0.2 entered in the respective lines of service. The wages paid to these employees would be adjusted accordingly so that the total wages across lines of service equals their salary.

Include physician assistants and nurse practitioners in these two items, but do not include physicians. Taxes and benefits paid for physicians are reported in the Income Statement - Physician Expenses section.

If a non-staff expense item cannot be allocated, enter all of the expenses under Orthopedics.

Report as Other Revenue in the Income Statement – Revenue section.

To provide a full accounting of physician expenses as reflected in the practice’s income statement, the compensation and benefits data reported in the Income Statement – Physician Expenses, collects additional detail on physician expenses and prevents that detail from being requested at the individual level. Specifically, the Income Statement – Physician Expenses section collects data on employment taxes, health related benefits, retirement plan contributions, and other direct expenses in a addition to compensation and bonuses.

When completing the Income Statement – Physician Expenses section, you can note the total compensation and bonus amounts reported in the Physician Productivity and Compensation section and enter that total into to the Physician Compensation and Bonuses field to minimize the amount of additional work.

If you have access to an AR report that was generated on or after December 31 of the reporting year, you can use the numbers included in that report. Otherwise, enter the most recent AR aging data you have. To prepare for participation in the Benchmarking Survey in future years, set a calendar reminder to pull AR data at the end of the current year, or as soon as possible afterwards.

Report the entire AR balance as Insurance Balance and enter ‘0’ for Patient Balance for the current year.

Report the number of studies, not individual scans.

Square footage specific to these items were removed from the survey to help streamline the Benchmarking Survey. This decision was based on: 1) the space dedicated to X-Ray and DME storage is a small percentage of the overall space used by a practice and 2) decisions to expand office space or add locations are typically not based on the space used for these services.

No, you can skip the Physician Recruitment section as it does not apply to you.

Please convert the payments to one of the units provided, most likely Per Day or Per Hour. Given the number of different shift definitions and payment units, it is difficult to include all possible unit options.