Often when we talk with physician’s who run their own practices, a primary cause of stress is insurance reimbursements. As a healthcare provider, the BUCA insurance companies dictate cost, compliance, pre-certifications, and more – and it can be hard to look past those requirements to find additional ways to increase revenue. However, if you work with the right CPA, we can help you assess your practice as a business to find areas that generate money that have little, or nothing, to do with insurance.
Lean Six Sigma: Implement Operational Processes
If you look around your practice, you can probably immediately identify things you’d like to improve, but operational processes refer to the essential business activities that deliver value to the customer by providing services/products. Here are just three areas you can consider investing a little time and money to see a drastic reduction in overall costs and inefficiencies.
Turnover is a major issue for small-to-mid sized practices. Imagine if you have one X-ray technician and they leave – what do you do in the time between when they leave and when you hire someone new? You can develop a contingency plan to temporarily outsource, but this will likely inconvenience your patients and also decrease income during that period of time. Instead, create a pipeline of potential employees by partnering with a local college or pay a web developer to create a portal on your website that always accepts resumes (even when you aren’t actively hiring).
In addition to developing a contingency plan, consider issuing a nurse/physician engagement survey to get a view of how staff in your practice is feeling. Caregiver fatigue is at an all-time high, so if you can pinpoint areas of concern, you can develop a strategy for improvement.
There are generally silos within the healthcare industry, which can actually add to the workforce issue. Instead of allowing individuals to dictate how something is done, set business guidelines. Expect pushback here, but creating standardizations will create unexpected efficiencies.
Here’s an example – say you have three physicians in your practice. One of them expects to have two nurses and a scribe, the second wants one nurse and one scribe, while the third prefers to have two nurses only. Instead of catering to these preferences, look at workloads and make a decision as a business how many staff a physician has – and keep it the same for everyone. Define when a physician’s workload dictates the need for an increase in their staff and set that as the standard. (The same scenario applies to tasks and personnel needs at the nurses’s station, front desk, technicians, etc.).
In all professions, technology is no longer an amenity – it is a necessity to do business. You’re likely already using some technology in diagnostic and practical areas of your practice, but it can also drastically decrease costs when used in administration.
Automation technology can reduce clinical costs and improve your patient satisfaction. For instance, administrative software can help you streamline patient flow and help with scheduling so patients has a decreased wait time. Apps provide a portal where patients can provide information, ask questions, and review their diagnoses and prescriptions. Even if you see these as unnecessary to the patient experience, you can’t deny the decrease in administrative tasks this software provides.
Examining your processes with a certified Lean Six Sigma CPA can help you figure out where to start. Avizo can work with you to identify areas of waste AND develop ways to improve.
Accounting Software: Control Your Cash Flow
Your practice administrator needs to continually monitor and evaluate cash flow. The following solutions described below can be completed with the assistance of a CPA and accounting software.
Change as Insurance Changes
Increase In-House Services
Track More Outcomes
More tracking can help you know when to hire, how to even caseloads, and how to find more areas to make money. For instance, if you find you get too many last-minute cancellations, require a booking fee to cover the time spent if a cancellation doesn't happen soon enough to fill the time slot.
Healthcare CPA
Focusing our consulting and accounting expertise in specific industries allows our organization the ability to help our clients in a more meaningful way. We’ve taken the time to understand more than accounting by learning about the healthcare profession’s business model. We’re ready to help you unravel the problems you’re facing and provide customized solutions to help your organization reach greater success.
A special thanks goes to Bob Stanley of Health One80 for sharing his experience in Health Care Strategy and Development consultancy with our team while we researched this topic.
Taylor Clinkenbeard, CPA
Taylor is a Strategic Analyst in our tax and client accounting services teams. She has developed specific expertise in software and accounting processes to serve our healthcare industry clients.
