Harris Healthcare Consulting, LLC

03/30/2026

Hey Portland area friends! Come and join us this weekend for another Free Community Event hosted by Assembly of the Wandering Shepherd

03/16/2026

📣 The Stryker cyberattack has been all over the news this week, and honestly, my first thought wasn't about the big health systems scrambling to disconnect their devices. It was about the small independent practices I work with every day.

Since I find taking action helps me in times like this, I wanted to share five things you should do right now:

✅ Complete your annual HIPAA Security Risk Analysis and act on what you find. The SRA requires you to identify weaknesses and put a mitigation plan in place. Documentation sitting in a drawer doesn't protect you. Following through does.

✅ Have a real conversation with your IT vendor. Not just a check-in. Sit down and ask them specifically what they are doing to protect your environment, how they would respond to an incident, and whether your current setup reflects your SRA findings. If they can't answer those questions clearly, that's important information.

✅ Train your staff and write it down. Phishing awareness is part of a compliant HIPAA program. Your front desk and billing staff are on the front line. If you can't prove training happened, regulators assume it didn't.

✅ Audit your user access. Clean up former employees, old vendor logins, and eliminate shared passwords. Take this opportunity to investigate password keeper software. There are a lot of great solutions out there.

✅ Dust off your downtime procedures. The organizations that handled the Stryker disruption best had already practiced what to do when systems go dark. Have a plan and test it.

Cybersecurity has always been a compliance issue. This week just made it easier to explain to the providers who've been putting it off.

You can find my free download, Top 10 Medical Practice Compliance Essentials here: https://www.harrishealthcareconsulting.com/the-hhc-help-center

And feel free to reach out to me if you need help 🤝

The HHC Help Center offers practical healthcare resources, tools, and guides created for practice leaders and healthcare organizations. Actionable templates, insights, and educational materials to support operations, leadership, and performance improvement.

03/09/2026

Your patient should never have to ask for a refund. 😤

If a patient is calling your office to ask for a refund, your internal process has already failed them. They are not your bookkeeper. Tracking down money you owe them is not their job.

Credit balances happen in every practice. Insurance pays differently than expected. Copays and co-insurance get collected at the time of service and the EOB tells a different story. That's normal. What is NOT acceptable is letting those credits sit unworked while the patient either doesn't know or has to chase you down. 💰

The issue I see consistently isn't that credits aren't being posted correctly. It's that there's no defined workflow for what happens next.

Who runs the credit balance report? Who processes the refunds? By when? If you can't answer those questions, credits are accumulating right now.

This is not a bookkeeping inconvenience. Credit balances are a liability on your financial statements. They're a compliance risk with real teeth. ⚖️

And don't overlook this: every state has unclaimed property laws. 🏛️ Credits that sit long enough are legally considered abandoned property and must be turned over to the state.

Refunds should be processed as soon as they're identified; at minimum monthly.

That requires three things:
✅ A clear practice policy designating someone who owns the process
✅ A credit balance report that gets run and worked regularly
✅ A refund workflow that doesn't require the patient to ask

If any of those are missing, it's time to fix it.

02/08/2026

🤝What a fabulous day of building clarity, competence and connection!

My Winter Workshop was a full house with 29 attendees from 25 practices and 5 states and 4 amazing business partners: Harvy, Credential Network, Columbia Bank and Barb Mack.

I’m so proud of the work we did together toward building sustainable practices and can’t wait until next time 🎉

01/29/2026

🚫 Compliance gets a bad reputation.

It’s often treated like a checklist or a binder that lives on a shelf. But when it’s done well, compliance directly supports how a practice functions every day.

My latest free resource, Top 10 Medical Practice Compliance Essentials, ties compliance to the Pillars of Practice Management, showing how clear policies, consistent billing, safe reporting, and real accountability strengthen staff engagement, patient trust, and financial stability.

☑️ If you want compliance to feel practical, approachable, and useful to how your practice actually operates, this guide was built for you.

You can find it and other free downloadable tools in the HHC Help Center on my website www.harrishealthcareconsulting.com

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12/08/2025

Clinicians, owners, and practice leaders deserve support too. If you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or navigating change, I’m here to help. 🤝

11/27/2025

11/17/2025

Last week Paula Hazen from Arbor Bank and I co-hosted Medical Management Matchmaking 2.0 in Portland, OR and wow… I’m still smiling.

We had 27 attendees representing 21 clinics, and several people told us it was the best networking event they’ve ever attended.

One theme came through loud and clear: private practice IS ALIVE AND WELL 🎉 When you put highly engaged practice leaders and clinicians in a room together, you see exactly why — they’re creative, collaborative, and deeply committed to their patients.

And the best part? New referral relationships were created on the spot.

People left with new and real connections that will directly impact patients. That’s the kind of community-building I love to see.

Huge thank you to everyone who joined us with curiosity, generosity, and a willingness to play along with our networking game.

Here’s to stronger partnerships, thriving private practices, and better care for the communities we serve. ❤️‍🩹

08/10/2025

🌸 Exciting news in women’s health 🌸

Big news from my client Chidimma Abanulo and her team 🎉 Jessica Benedict, WHNP-BC has joined Femme Flôr Women's Pelvic Medicine in Hillsboro, OR!

Dr. Abanulo is a board-certified urogynecologist who founded Femme Flôr to give women a safe, welcoming space for pelvic health care. Known for her compassionate approach, she combines advanced surgical and non-surgical treatments with a genuine commitment to making every patient feel heard and understood.

Jessica is a women’s health nurse practitioner who is passionate about helping women feel comfortable, confident, and in control of their pelvic health 💜 Her warm, approachable style makes her a perfect fit for Femme Flôr’s mission of combining advanced treatment with truly personalized care.

✨ At Femme Flôr, you are not just another patient on a schedule. You are cared for in a spa-like private practice setting where your providers control the time they spend with you, the treatments they recommend, and the experience you have. No corporate quotas. No assembly-line visits. Just focused, compassionate care that puts you first.

From pelvic organ prolapse to incontinence, postpartum recovery to pelvic pain, you now have two incredible providers ready to help you feel your best

🌺 Femme Flôr is currently welcoming new patients.
💐 Learn more about the team or book your visit:

A well woman exam, also known as an annual gynecologic exam, is a routine medical visit to assess a woman’s overall health, detect any health problems, and provide preventive care.

07/12/2025

5 Years In and We're Just Getting Started!

There’s a lot of noise out there about everything that’s going wrong in healthcare, but that’s NOT what I’m hearing from the practices I work with. Instead, I’m seeing real wins. Real momentum. And private practices that are leaning in and growing, even in uncertain times. Let’s celebrate some good news together!

🎉 Harris Healthcare Consulting just turned FIVE.
I started HHC in July 2020 with a mission to help practices stay independent, resilient, and well-led. I’ve always believed that small practices can make a big impact—and five years in, I’ve seen it up close.

We’ve partnered with practices to launch, recruit, coach, and restructure. We've celebrated wins with confetti and weathered a few storms with Kleenex.

I’m so proud of the relationships we’ve built and the trust we’ve earned with over 100 clients across the country.

When I started HHC, I wasn’t just launching a business, I was betting on the idea that private practices could thrive with the right support. Five years in, that belief is stronger than ever. I started this work because I knew practices, and the people leading them, deserved better.

If you’re ready to build a practice that is strong, sustainable, and rooted in purpose, I’d love to help.

07/11/2025

"DellaCroce and Sullivan had repeatedly sued the insurer, alleging that it granted approvals for surgery but then denied payments or paid only a fraction of patients’ bills. They pointed to calls like the one Arch received as proof of the company’s effort to drive away patients. The aggressive legal attack, they knew, was fraught. Litigation against the $3.4 billion company would take a long time and a lot of money. The chances of winning were slight. 'You fight dragons at great peril,' DellaCroce would tell friends. But this September, after 18 years and several defeats in court, jurors found Blue Cross liable for fraud. They awarded the center $421 million — one of the largest verdicts ever to a single medical practice outside of a class-action lawsuit. In a statement, Blue Cross said it 'disagrees with the jury’s decision, which we believe was wrong on the facts and the law. We have filed an appeal and expect to be successful.'

The Blue Cross trial provides a rare opportunity to expose in detail the ways that health insurance companies wield power over doctors and their patients. Blue Cross executives testified that the breast center charged too much money — sometimes more than $180,000 for an operation. The center, they said, deserved special attention because it had a history of questionable charges. But the insurer’s defense went even further, to the very meaning of 'prior authorization,' which it had granted women like Arch to pursue surgery. The authorization, they said in court, recognized that a procedure was medically necessary, but it also contained a clause that it was 'not a guarantee of payment.' Blue Cross was not obliged to pay the center anything, top executives testified. 'Let me be clear: The authorization never says we’re going to pay you,' said Steven Udvarhelyi, who was the CEO for the insurer from 2016 to 2024, in a deposition. 'That’s why there’s a disclaimer.'"

April 12, 2025

Blue Cross authorized mastectomies and breast reconstructions for women with cancer but refused to pay the full doctors’ bills. A jury called it fraud and awarded the practice $421 million.

07/10/2025

"This apocalypse is happening throughout rural communities across the country. More than 100 rural hospitals have closed in the past decade, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR), a national policy center that works to improve health care payment systems and whose data have been cited by the Bipartisan Policy Center. About one-third of all rural hospitals in the country are at risk of closing because of financial problems. In Alabama, 23 rural hospitals—about half of all of them in the state—are at immediate risk of closing, according to CHQPR.

People often blame rural hospital closures on poor reimbursement rates from Medicare and Medicaid. There’s a reason for that assumption: Just about every hospital loses money on Medicaid and Medicare, since reimbursement rates are low nationwide. But hospitals like the one in Thomasville are struggling not because they serve a large share of poor patients or elderly people on these plans."

It's not just Medicaid or Medicare: Private insurance payments lag in rural areas.