Book excerpt: To help medical practices increase profitability without cutting costs or boosting revenues, Greenbranch Publishing announces a new book by Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt Frank Cohen and Practice Management Expert Owen Dahl: Mastering Lean Six Sigma for the Medical Practice - Improving Profitability by Improving Processes. For the first time, this new book translates Lean Six Sigma principles and tools specifically for the real-world medical practice environment. Drawing on his involvement with over 2,000 medical practices, author and Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt Frank Cohen empowers practices - and their advisors - to use 24 process improvement tools to boost efficiency so more of the revenues that come in go directly to the bottom line. What types of improvements can practices make? Learn how to use analytics to identify inconsistent behavior by payers - so practices can hold payers' feet to the fire. See how process improvement can help practices reduce denials by upwards of 50%. Use these techniques to improve both patient satisfaction and staff morale. Learn how to eliminate bottlenecks in your practice and use metrics to make smart practice improvement decisions. Over the past 20 years, Lean and Six Sigma approaches have created profit breakthroughs for other types of businesses. Cohen and Dahl bring this methodology to health care providers, whittling down the myriad of traditional Lean Six Sigma tools to only those that matter most to their practices. Add Lean Six Sigma for the Medical Practice to your "must-read-now" bookshelf and take the first steps toward improving everything from patient visit cycle time to, A/R to staff and patient satisfaction and morale to compliance.