With declining insurance reimbursement, high deductible plans limiting patients’ access to their providers, and rising costs for technology and compliance, many practices are struggling just to maintain their revenue. Below are three steps medical practices can take to increase their revenue this year:
Listen to patients. Patient demographics can vary widely, even between neighboring counties. Every patient encounter provides clues into what patients are thinking about, and what kinds of needs are unmet. Providers can gain a competitive advantage by identifying opportunities to address patient needs and gaps in service. Patient complaints, on the phone or on ratings sites, should be taken seriously. Often providers dismiss patient complaints, however these can be the first clues signaling staff issues which may be costing the practice volume… and revenue. Patient perception, accurate or not, hits the practice’s bottom line. Therefore it’s important for providers to listen.
Check your cash controls. Busy practices can start out with good policies and procedures, but as they grow, what’s written in the policy can ultimately wind up being very different from the daily workarounds actually used by practice staff. In a busy practice environment, cutting corners on charge reconciliation or failing to review the appropriateness and accuracy of recorded write-offs can lead to lost revenue. It can be tempting to stop auditing when things appear to be running smoothly, but it doesn’t take long to lose revenue when employees become complacent about policies and procedures.
Benchmark your practice. Many practices measure their performance by their own history alone. By benchmarking key metrics against same specialty and geographic region benchmarks, the practice can identify suboptimal areas in the revenue cycle to drill down on. “Better than the previous year”, does not necessarily mean “best practice,” or that the practice has realized its full potential- benchmarking provides insight into areas which could be improved.
