3 Ways to Make Your Medical Practice Financially Strong in 2020 (Partner Feature)
It’s 2020 and now is the perfect time to evaluate the financial health of your clinic. It’s a new year and with it come fresh ways of providing the best patient care, goals for improving patient outcomes, and running a healthy practice. We chose to interview the experts on this one and walked away with 3 ways to make your medical practice financially strong in 2020.
Increase Collection Effectiveness (Clearwave)
Practices often face issues when it comes to collecting payments for their services. Reasons for missed payments vary widely and can range from patients not having enough funds for the payment, to them not even knowing the amount was owed. Regardless of the reason, the result is the same:
Missed revenue for your practice can constrict budgets and keep your business from pursuing important initiatives.
To make matters worse, many patients who don’t know about owed payments become irate upon finding out about them, causing uncomfortable conversations and undue stress for your front-office staff.
However, your practice can increase its collections by implementing an automated check-in system, like Clearwave. By automating insurance checks and decreasing the patient’s friction-to-pay, your office can drastically increase its collections. This solution not only increases your chances of receiving prompt payment for your services, but it also ensures that patients that cannot pay in full set up payment plans so that they can be treated, giving your practice the revenue it deserves. In fact, Clearwave customers have increased collections by 25%-65%, through its automated collections solution.
Additionally, implementing an automated patient intake system changes the psychology of the payment by requiring patients to set up remittance before entering the doctor’s office. This reduces the chances of patients being surprised by the cost of service, which not only improves the patient experience, but also decreases your staff’s obligation to have those awkward payment conversations with customers, reducing stress and giving them more time for important, value-adding tasks.
Un-collected revenues can be a huge drain on resources and can keep your practice from reaching its full potential. However, implementing an automated patient intake system, like Clearwave, can make your patients happier, give time back to your staff, and generate more revenue to support the important work that you do day-in and day-out.
#1 Patient Check-in System | Patient Registration Kiosk | Clearware
Clearwave’s medical patient check in kiosk dramatically speeds up the patient experience. Give your patients control over their access & information.
Automate Processes (The Bienville Group)
The Bienville Group’s consultants are experts in electronic health record (EHR) systems and in improving clinical workflow. Our knowledge and expertise allow us to customize each EHR to the specific needs of each provider and then deliver training, implementation and support to promote the optimal level of EHR functionality.
Assessing the systems, staffing, processes, and outcomes of a practice can identify room for enhancement as well as the opportunity to diminish or delete non-value added tasks. Customizing your EHR to capture and generate information specific to your medical specialty will dramatically increase efficiency and add functionality that may be missing from your current business regimen.
Template customization can dramatically decrease documentation time, improve billing, and increase patient flow. However, we see time and time again that providers do not have the time to spend customizing these templates. We understand: From a financial perspective, a provider’s time is better spent seeing patients than tweaking templates.
Our consultants are experts in clinical template design and clinical workflow. We work closely with your providers, clinical staff, and coding and compliance team to ensure the creation of templates that produce the most efficient use of time and accuracy of information. No more extra clicks, no more deleting unnecessary information, and no more searching in real time for orders, diagnoses, and medications. An EHR system is a tremendous investment. Let The Bienville Group show you how to make that system an integral and successful facet of your business.
Since 2004, The Bienville Group has helped many medical practices
optimize performance by improving profitability and anticipating and addressing future challenges.
Increase Patient Engagement (PatientPop)
Today’s patients are demanding more from healthcare providers than ever before. They also have a greater selection of available care options, as
90% of healthcare practices say they’re
currently in a competitive market.
To stand out, strong patient engagement now means delivering more than other practices, from first impressions to lasting relationships. Technology plays a critical role.
With three of four people having looked online for care, today’s patient experience begins long before a visit or phone call. It starts the moment a patient searches for a doctor online, and extends beyond the appointment, to ongoing digital communications that inspire patient loyalty. Consider the patient experience as more than just a single episode of care; it now means a regular connection, with a lifetime value, for both provider and patient. Three-quarters of practices with effective patient communications are satisfied with their practice’s success, according to PatientPop 2020 practice growth survey results. One in four are very satisfied.
The first step toward meaningful engagement? Go where the patients are. Optimize your practice’s website and online profiles (think Google, Yelp, Facebook), so prospective patients can find you and your services in local online search. From there, use tech services to monitor and manage your patient reviews, and offer patients the ease of online scheduling, email communications, and text messaging. You’ll be updating your practice for 2020 and delivering consumer conveniences that help any practice improve acquisition, drive retention, and maintain a strong bottom line.
Norm Schrager is senior strategist at PatientPop, the healthcare leader in practice growth technology. Norm leads thought leadership development, identifying and sharing insights to help healthcare providers thrive.
We went to the experts on this one. Don’t let collection effectiveness, automating processes, and increasing patient engagement be something you take on alone. Let’s make 2020 the best year ever for your practice.