May 31 Update
Car Allowance:
Please remember to send your documentation to the finance department (khall@starlingphysicians.com or klamb@starlingphysicians.com). I have attached again several documents.
One is the explanation and samples.
The other two are worksheets if you lease a car or purchased it outright and need to depreciate it.
Please remember that your salary draw will be reduced by the amount of your car allowance. You will take home more money; however, you will see less in your paycheck and a separate check for the car allowance. Since you aren’t paying income taxes on the car allowance part, you come out ahead. In the future we will try to combine so you only receive one direct deposit, but for now unfortunately it needs to be separate.
Lab Issues: Please don’t use the electronic health record to communicate about lab issues or errors with your staff. Although in some cases it may be easier, it is apparently a compliance problem and at least in some cases could be a medicolegal issue. Better options are to either submit directly to labsupportdesk@starlingphysicians.com or ask your staff to send.
Search Committee: As the process unfolds, there will need to be a search committee for the CEO. There will be Board of Directors and executive representation of course, but if others are interested in serving, please let us know. To have a sound process, committee members will have to be flexible in terms of availability for interviews and be there for all the candidates to allow meaningful comparison. Depending on the level of interest, there may need to be a selection process for members of the team from the general partnership.
Bylaws Change: To allow the flexibility to hire a full-time CEO for Starling, we need to change the bylaws. They currently state the CEO must be a partner who is in active practice. The Board would like to eliminate this requirement, and in fact entertain candidates who are not physicians if they are otherwise the best suited for the role. The bylaws purposely have a high bar for changes. It is therefore imperative that we get good turnout at the partner meeting, or proxies for the vote for those who cannot attend. If you do not plan to attend, please arrange soon to give your proxy to someone. I can take anyone’s proxies, as well. You can print the attached form, sign, and either scan or take a picture and send to Dawn Saling and to me.
Click here for the Proxy form >>
Phone Care Codes: If you remember, there are new Medicare codes for care given that is not in-person. These are ready to go in Allscripts and Billing. The last remaining piece is avoidance of irate patients: please consider telling patients in advance if you expect to be providing these new services, so that they are not surprised to be charged.
Email Forwarding to HHC: From a security and confidentiality perspective, it is bad form to have Starling emails routinely forwarded to your hhchealth account. At some point fairly soon this will be inactivated by IT. Please do one of the alternative options: forward hhc to your Starling email; use your All Inboxes option (on iPhones, not sure about Android) to draw both of them in, or just look at them separately when needed. NPS can help if you need assistance reconfiguring.