At Quatris Healthco, we help practices increase revenue by streamlining what they already do, and expanding their reach with new and returning patients. We find time and again that smarter management is fundamental for practices that are serious about shifting into higher performance.
Here some essential tips to put into practice to increase your medical practice revenue.
Fill Your Schedule to Increase Revenue
Here’s a recipe for better revenue: keep every appointment booked, make sure everyone shows up as scheduled and the (rare) no-shows are easily replaced with other eager patients.
A lofty goal? Sure. There are plenty of challenges to manage. But you can make it your reality if you strategically optimize your daily patient schedule workflow.
Be Flexible
The more accessible your scheduling system is for patients, the easier it will be to cut down on no-shows. Provide self-service options for scheduling and rescheduling, so they can manage appointments on their own through a portal.
Automate Reminders
Send bulk reminders and more personalized messages to patients in anticipation of their appointments. These reminders can also be used for preventative health measures and holiday scheduling.
Fill Cancelled Appointment Slots
Last-minute cancellations can never be completely avoided, but you can mitigate the loss by offering those appointments to patients who have expressed interest. This requires a list of potential patients, and a swift means of reaching out to them.
Expand Services To Diversify Revenue Sources
Patients want care, they need it, but structural issues stand in the way. They may not be able to find the specific services they need in their area. Or, like millions of Americans, a lack of transportation options may prevent them from reaching your office.
The more accessible you can make yourself to the community at large, the more steady your revenue stream will be.
Provide More Ancillary Services
Consider adding services that patients already need. Imaging services such as x-rays, and CT scans, can bring in steady additional revenue – and also potentially save your patients from paying higher prices for the same services at nearby hospitals. Chronic Care Management is another service line that provides vital support for high-risk patients as well as easily managed business for a practice.
Provide Telehealth Options
It seems like all of the US got intimately familiar with video chat in 2020 telemedicine in particular grew in an unprecedented way. By making telehealth part of your standard practice, you can welcome patients who would otherwise never make it into your office due to mobility issues. Telehealth is also a great way to fill open appointment slots when patients cancel at the last minute.
Support Your Staff To Increase Performance
A medical practice is only as strong as the team that keeps it running. Keeping a full roster of well trained, motivated, and ambitious staff is one of the most reliable ways to strengthen any business, especially healthcare. (And, on the flipside, high employee turnover can be a major financial drain.)
Devote More Physician Time To Patient Care
In small practices especially, doctors find themselves doing a little bit of everything, including team management and even administrative legwork. It might feel necessary, but it’s an inefficient use of labor hours. Physicians should be spending more time providing care – ultimately, care is the product your business provides.
Delegate Challenging Work To Your Staff
Let your nurses and physician’s assistants provide care to the best of their training and abilities. Assign them challenging tasks that allow them to grow, engage with patients, and free up the physicians to work to the best of their own abilities. Making these improvements requires streamlining workflows throughout your practice.
Collect The Revenue You’re Already Owed
Medical practices of all sizes regularly fail to collect money owed from reimbursements and patients alike. With ever-changing regulations and labyrinthine submission systems that differ across providers, practices have historically lacked the labor resources to effectively stay on top of billing and collections. Luckily, tech has provided some amazing solutions.
Submit (Flawless) Claims Daily
Every healthcare office has experience with claims bouncing back to their desk because of small errors or inconsistencies. You need to keep up-to-date on coding and eliminate errors before claims go out. The easiest way to do this is by automating the labor with a regularly updated database.
Address Denials & Resubmit Immediately
Identifying, correcting, and resubmitting claims one at a time can be a tremendous labor drain – unless you’ve optimized the process with a hosted claims management platform. The sooner the claim is resubmitted, the sooner you get paid, and the quicker the stack of outstanding claims decreases.
Enable Patients To Pay Online
Seventy-five percent of adults are online daily, and more than 2/3 of patients would prefer to pay their bills online. Not only does online bill pay increase the likelihood of patients paying their bills, it also decreases the number of personal checks that come across your desk – and all of the payment processing labor that entails. Reminders about bills and payment instructions can be sent automatically to patients as well.
Conclusion
Strategies for increasing revenue in your practice are the same strategies that will create a more relaxed and satisfying workplace for you and your team.When you effectively manage scheduling, delegation, and billing, you’re making it easier to focus on providing care. And the more you can focus on care, the more satisfied your patients will be. By making all of the client-facing processes more accessible to patients, you can welcome a broader group of people to your practice.
The best possible care for the most possible people, that’s the goal. Explore the possibilities with one of our team members today.