Changing How Your Practice Can Increase Revenue
Birmingham Medical News reports on how effective changes to your medical practice can increase revenue. The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) enumerates the major reasons for declining income in medical practices. These are declining revenues, rising costs, and declining physician reimbursement rates. In high tech businesses today such as Oracle, billing and management solutions are essential to well-functioning business models. They are just as essential to your medical practice.
Analyze Your Balance Sheet
When profits appear to be shrinking the first thing to look at is the balance sheet. Is there something that’s causing big debt such as burdensome rent, instalment debt, declining profits or equipment rental that you can’t really afford?
Repayment of loans for a normal size practice can even be as high as $100K to $200K per year. In times when income is declining and physicians are in the very highest tax bracket the prospect of breaking even may seem impossible. Getting out of both personal and professional debt is a good goal to set as the first step towards revenue improvement.
Improve Collections Process
Collection is also an important focus area. Medical practices are not always geared to be effective debt collection agencies. Yet the loss of revenue may be crippling. On the bright side it’s possible to contract out collections to appropriate agencies that can leave you with a net gain you’ll be delighted with.
Some experts say that if you wait 60 days to initiate patient collections, you will never receive payment. They suggest that the collection process begins when the patient calls the first time to make an appointment. Let the patient know what their obligations are when they set up their first appointment. Also make sure to tell them that co-pays are due when service is rendered. Managing your fees well can definitely help you stay in the black.
Build Patient Base Through Marketing, Referrals, and Excellent Customer Service
Increasing the number of your patients is also a good way to enhance revenue. Creating a good website is one way to increase the quality of your patient relations as well as the number of referrals. Excellent customer service is another way to keep your current clients happy and bring in new business. No show management can also help keep revenues higher.
Optimize Physician’s Time
Optimizing the doctor’s time by arranging things so that he can focus on seeing patients rather than doing paper work will also boost revenue. Physicians all too often waste valuable time creating reports and performing numerous other non-medical tasks. If doctors focus more on volume they are sure to increase their patient count and consequently their revenue. Rechecking appointments first thing in the morning will free up time for the doctor to focus on his primary tasks throughout the day. Starting one hour earlier can also increase revenue significantly.
With the near future requirements for electronic medical records systems and current requirements of the demanding new ICD-10 record format requiring substantial amounts of detailed medical documentation as well as follow up, overhead costs will tend to skyrocket. That’s why getting your office under control is key to your financial survival.
M-Scribe is a leading medical billing company that can help you maximize your revenue stream. As a nationwide provider of medical billing services for group practices as well as multi-site, multi-specialty practices and hospitals, they can ensure that valuable revenue will be collected in a timely manner. No longer will tens of thousands of dollars go to waste due to lack of attention. When you know that you will have the highest level of billing efficiency you can feel less stressed about your other numerous challenges.