Every medical practice has its own method of keeping records. Currently, the majority of practices are keeping their medical and business data separate – despite the fact that maintaining two different systems for record keeping is costly, time consuming, and far less effective.
There are software systems, however, that let you combine the individual medical and business systems into an integrated whole.
A practice can grow larger by serving more patients and/or gaining more practitioners; when it does, the volume of transactions increases. Profit and loss statements, patients treated, medications dispensed, and hours worked have to be tracked for each individual provider. Insurance payments, co-pays, and scheduling of appointments must be done for each patient. With all the extra work that a larger practice entails, the current system of two different software programs becomes unmanageable.
Integrating offers flexibility to managers, practitioners, and the support staff. Each member of the team has a dashboard that displays the details of the practice and its finances so that time is not wasted searching for reports or waiting for updates. The provider can stay on top of his or her own practice in real-time.
The managing partners can monitor their dashboards to see each physician’s profit and loss statement and productivity rates, helping them to identify trends across the whole practice.
And the practice administrator has the tools to run the day-to-day operations, watch the accounting, deal with questions from physicians, generate reports, see trends, and manage problems before they start.
For example, the Chief Financial Officer’s dashboard would provide a daily overview of revenue per bed, profit and loss, amounts due from patients, outstanding bills, cash balances, and purchasing transactions. And individual physician’s dashboard would show their individual profit and loss, information about current patients, and details about incoming patients. The office staff’s dashboards would show cash balances and income by facility, expenses by vendor, and would have shortcuts for reports.
Navigating this transition should be seen as an opportunity to use technology to improve patient care while simultaneously making the business easier to run. Transitioning into an integrated whole is not something that happens easily or quickly, however. It is a process that requires special knowledge and experience. Considering that a medical practice is more than just a business, the right consultant must be savvy in the medical arena as well as the business arena.
Medical practices should ‘shop around’ when choosing integration software and should be prepared to interview possible consultants. The most important questions include: Do they have experience in both business and medical areas? Do they have experience training people? Have they completed an integration project before? Do they have references or examples to indicate the quality of their work? Will they be available for follow-up issues and/or questions?
Finding the right consultant makes the difference between a successful integration and a failed integration. A good consultant eliminates a substantial amount of stress and ensures a smooth, successful integration – ultimately leaving the medical practice with a more streamlined and easier to use software system that will improve business practices and patient services and make the company a better place for employees and patients alike.
