Maintain or Even Boost Practice Margins With These Tips
by BillingFreedom | Nov 25, 2024
Use assessments by evaluating the engagement and involvement to strengthen your healthcare business.
A major factor impacting margins is the rising costs across healthcare, such as staffing and supplies, while payers need to increase their payments. As expenses increase but revenue remains flat, losses grow.
While large budget adjustments, such as altering compensation, may seem appealing, focusing on innovative strategies to preserve essential resources like staffing was emphasized.
Identifying Key Indicators to Improve Healthcare Margins
The initial step is to identify symptoms. Four key categories are evaluated: revenue, expenses, turnover and engagement, and patient satisfaction.
This involves examining various aspects of revenue, such as payer mix, financial intake, clinician workload, and the relative value unit (RVU) percentage of contracted rates.
Monitoring Contracts and Financial Health for Sustainable Practice Management
Contracts must be reviewed closely, as payers may occasionally insert rate adjustments without clear notice. Practices or clinicians might receive a seemingly routine letter only to find it includes a notice of an upcoming change in reimbursement rates.
Examining other elements of financial health, such as bad debts, underpayments, and, if applicable, visit volumes segmented by service line, location, and type of visit.
Expenses require careful analysis, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, where costs may appear to have surged. Bowman recommended examining data to understand both total and proportional increases. Key areas likely to show significant rises include staffing, supplies, equipment, and IT.
For instance, most practices now rely on electronic health records (EHR), often managed by vendor software. Staff members using EHR systems may require additional tech support, necessitating either in-house personnel or vendor services—an added expense that didn’t exist before the shift to digital healthcare, which can be substantial.
Balancing Staffing and Addressing Burnout to Improve Practice Efficiency
It becomes challenging to provide quality care when practice is understaffed, as remaining team members are often forced to pitch in, leading to burnout. “When you’re shorthanded, that’s when your staff gets burned out.”
Burnout among healthcare professionals has become a widespread concern, often resulting in retirements or transitions to other organizations. Contributing factors include increasing mandates, decreasing reimbursements, and rising operational costs. Addressing these challenges requires actionable insights into the patient experience.
Collecting patient feedback through tools like QR codes, short online surveys, or Google Reviews offers valuable information. Brief questions about scheduling and wait times are effective, as many patients are willing to provide quick responses. Feedback can uncover issues such as staff burnout, long wait times, or facility upkeep, which directly impact satisfaction. Acting on this input supports both provider well-being and improved care delivery.
Focusing on Provider Productivity to Optimize Revenue
Nonclinical staff play a vital role in bringing patients into the practice, managing office operations, and handling payments while providers generate revenue. The importance of evaluating provider productivity was emphasized, with a focus on tracking key metrics and comparing them to industry benchmarks by specialty, as well as within the practice for each provider. Suggested metrics include:
- Visits per session or day
- WRVUs per session or day, or clinical full-time employee
- Dollars per WRVU or patient encounter
- Patient visits, procedures, surgical volumes, and yield
This insight could reveal situations where certain providers may not be contributing to their full potential.
Benchmarking is crucial to ensure fair evaluation, especially since providers’ schedules and workloads can vary widely.
Additionally, the types of patients providers see directly influence the revenue generated. Analyzing local organizations and common payment sources helps identify disparities in rates. Access to this information proves valuable for managing new entries and effectively balancing reimbursement potential.
Cultivating a Positive Workplace Culture to Drive Results
Many of the measures impacting practice outcomes are deeply connected to workplace culture. The behaviors you focus on will align with the cultural norms within your organization, so it’s essential to direct attention to the right areas to achieve desired results. “You get what you focus on.” If things are not aligned with the desired culture, it can lead to behaviors that hinder your goals.
One strategy is implementing an incentive-based bonus plan. Her practice uses a quarterly bonus, not large in amount but awarded when specific criteria, like a 98 percent net collection rate, are met. Offering a bonus plan for all staff can incentivize underperformers across departments, potentially improving office workflow and easing interoffice tensions, even if the financial impact isn’t immediately noticeable.
Documentation and delegating responsibilities are essential to ensuring the completion of important tasks. This approach applies not only to patient encounters but also to general business activities such as leases, scheduling, and payroll. It is crucial to ensure that a capable individual is managing the task effectively for any critical aspect of a business or practice.
An example illustrates the value of compassion in the workplace. Following a tragic loss within the team, the decision to offer two weeks of paid leave highlighted the importance of supporting individuals through challenging times. This act of empathy not only provided much-needed space for healing but also reinforced a culture of care and respect, strengthening loyalty and engagement among the team.
The importance of selecting impactful measures was emphasized, highlighting the need for progress and meaningful change. A focus on improving outcomes and driving better performance ensures continuous improvement and measurable success.
A Culture of Trust and Collaboration at BillingFreedom is The Key To Success
At BillingFreedom, our success is driven by a strong work ethic, a healthy work environment, and the trust we place in our team. We believe that a positive, collaborative culture is essential to delivering exceptional medical billing services in usa. Our team’s shared commitment to quality and excellence ensures that we streamline billing processes, reduce denials, and optimize reimbursements for healthcare practices.
By fostering trust and investing in ongoing training, we empower our team to bring innovative solutions that improve operational efficiency and patient care. We don’t just manage your billing; we actively engage with your practice to identify areas of improvement and create tailored solutions.
This culture of trust and collaboration extends to our clients as well. We prioritize transparency, reliability, and responsiveness, making sure we adapt quickly to changes in the healthcare industry. When you partner with BillingFreedom, you’re not just hiring a billing service—you’re joining a team that’s committed to the growth and success of your practice so you can focus on providing excellent care to your patients.
For more details about our exceptional medical billing services, please don't hesitate to email us at info@billingfreedom.com or call us at +1 (855) 415-3472. Your financial tranquillity is our priority!
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