Practice Administrators: Your Role in the Academy

Jacob Manthey, MBA, MsHCM, Director, AAO-HNS Health Policy and Practice Advocacy

Behind every successful ENT practice is a strong administrative team. From the billers and coders to the front desk and office managers, your nonclinical staff members are critical to the care you provide for your patients.

Practice administrators play many essential roles, but two stand out: ensuring proper reimbursement and maintaining a positive patient experience. On the reimbursement side, your staff educates patients on their insurance coverage and ensures necessary paperwork is filed so you receive adequate payment for the services you provide. 

The Importance of Ensuring Patient Satisfaction

The healthcare marketplace can be confusing and scary for patients, and your administrative staff serve as the bridge between the clinical and business aspects of care. By guiding patients through the process with clarity and compassion, they have a direct impact on your practice's reputation, strengthen relationships with referring providers, and ultimately contribute to your business success.

The Academy’s Health Policy staff had the privilege of traveling to Kansas City, Missouri, and presenting at the 2025 Administrator Support Community for ENT (ASCENT) annual meeting in September, which highlighted these very goals. Approximately 250 administrators representing a variety of practice types and sizes participated in lively discussions and networking opportunities over the course of three days. These valuable conversations emphasized that collaboration with our administrative community is more important than ever. Below are a few takeaways from these conversations:  

1. Coverage and reimbursement remain at the top of everyone’s radar. From Medicare payment stability to private payers, this is where the rubber meets the road for many practices to stay afloat and provide necessary, quality care. For example, practices continue to express concerns about the coverage of debridement as postoperative care for sinus surgery, the availability and applicability of modifiers, and medically necessary procedures being labeled by payers as “experimental and investigational.” At the Academy, tackling these challenges is our Advocacy and Health Policy Teams’ top priority, and we are committed to advocating for policies that reflect these concerns—across private payers and government entities.
2. Any time there are coverage and reimbursement challenges, administrative burden inevitably follows. Nothing is easy when working with health insurance providers, and each payer has their own rules and requirements, making it difficult for practices to implement a “one size fits all” strategy.  With more payers using automated processes and AI to adjudicate claims, the time and resources required to appeal denials are a constant concern for many practices. Our goal at the Academy is to push back on policies that increase the administrative burden and to provide resources that help practices navigate denials in the era of AI.
3. A key element of the patient experience is education. Patients often have a difficult time understanding what their plan covers and why certain services may be denied. This confusion means that your practice administrators often find themselves in an educator role as they try to explain these nuances to the patient. To help address this, and to strengthen your practice’s advocacy efforts, the Academy encourages practices to engage patients in issues of non-coverage. Better-informed patients will only streamline the claims process, reduce misunderstandings, and minimize unexpected patient financial responsibility. 

The Academy has many resources available to our members, so make sure your administrators are AAO-HNS members so that they can best support your practice. The AAO-HNS not only has a dedicated category for administrators to join but is proud to partner with ASCENT to provide a discount to ASCENT members on their AAO-HNS dues.

We continue to advocate with payers, government agencies, industry partners, and other relevant stakeholders on your behalf, but we need practices (and practice administrators) to engage with us. One way is to report experiences and concerns to us through our Member Inquiry process. The Health Policy team is here to help and provide guidance and resources, but we need your real-world information to guide us. If you have an inquiry, email healthpolicy@entnet.org, and we will be happy to help!