Multi-physician practices seem like a slam dunk in terms of logistics, billing, and other administrative considerations. Once the overheads are in place, theoretically it should be easy for practices to add additional physicians. Yet many practices struggle to manage multiple physicians and/or clinical teams.
Doctors’ offices are busy places, and the more doctors a practice has, the busier it is. Patients come with paperwork and, logically, the more patients a practice has, the more paperwork there is. Sometimes when a practice opts to go the multi-physician route, it fails to consider this increase practically versus ideally, insofar as it expects increased revenue but may not think to hire additional support staff or update their computer software.
If no additional support staff is hired and/or computer software is not upraded, the existing support staff will inevitably become overwhelmed. And when the support staff is overwhelmed, their ability to help their doctors and keep the practice running smoothly is hindered. To fix problems like this, the practice needs to sit down and identify what's working and what isn't. This seems obvious, but many physicians and their staff are so busy tending to their patients that they sometimes forget that business principles apply to medical practices too.
Analysis of the problem may show that it is a practice’s software that is causing an issue. If it isn’t providing detailed reports about revenue, resources, patients, and schedules, it’s not doing the right things.
One common issue is dealing with patient insurance eligibility and/or pre-authorizations. In the “old days,” this was often verified by phone and patients had to wait for staff to contact the insurer and then get back to them. Fortunately, the methods for managing eligibility can now be captured in computer software packages – packages that can be user defined criteria and can check eligibility automatically and in real-time. Having this software will not only save time and energy and reduce the stress on support staff, it will also give the patient better service.
Sometimes something is submitted to an insurance company and then rejected. Before integrated software systems, support staff had to research the issue, often on the phone with an insurance company that already had too many phone calls. Automating this process is another way to avoid burdening the support staff, as the software will automatically route the denials to where the need to be. Not only does this reduce stress on the support staff and give the patient better service, it also ensures that the practice is paid promptly and revenue stays solid.
Sitting down to analyze problems helps a practice to organize and streamline their current business processes as well as to identify room for improvement and expansion. There is no reason that a multi-physician practice can’t be just as straightforward to as a single-physician one.
Contact Oates & Company to learn more about how we can help your multi-physician practice avoid industry pitfalls.
