Tips to Reduce Expenses at Your Medical Clinic
If you run a small medical practice, you know the cost to keep the doors open continues to rise. If you want to remain in business, you have to find ways to reduce your costs. In fact, one of the top business constraints for all small businesses across all industries is growing operating costs.
For most smaller practices or solo doctors, cutting excess expenses is common practice to help improve profitability. What you may not realize is there may be other steps you can take as well. To reduce your expenses, you may have to think outside the box and find ways to break the habits and things you have grown accustomed to. For example, have you ever looked into where to buy solar panels as an alternative source of power? If not, now it is time to change your thinking.
Keep reading for some useful tips to help your small practice find and eliminate any excess expenditures you may be making.
Implement a Patient Portal for Appointment Scheduling
You can begin managing your costs by reducing the amount of time your staff is on the phone. The best way to do this is by deploying an online system, which will let patients schedule appointments on their own. One of the best options is to implement a patient portal.
With a patient portal, your patients will be able to manage appointments, view personal information, lab tests, billing updates, and more. You can also integrate these innovative systems with EHR (electronic health record systems). With this feature, you can find a solution that suits your needs.
When the technology is integrated into your operations, you can reduce your staff’s overall workload. This may also eliminate the need for you to hire more staff to handle an influx of patients. It will also help with collections. When your patients schedule an appointment, they will also be more likely to schedule a follow-up. The convenience these portals offer will improve the income and profitability of your practice.
Implement Practice Management Systems to Reduce Billing Efforts
Another financial problem impacting medical practices is incorrect coding and billing at different stages of sending bills to patients. Improper coding and billing may take place because of a few different reasons. This includes the slow collection of receivables from your patients and coding the wrong levels by staff members.
There are steps you can take to avoid incorrect coding and billing. One of the best options is to utilize a practice management system. This type of system will handle all billing procedures. It also offers automated medical billing and real-time verification of patient insurance eligibility and verification. Even better, it helps to simplify the claims and billing process and is easy to integrate into your existing EHR system.
Medical errors can happen at even times, even by the properly trained and professional staff members. When you automate your billing with the practice management solution you implement, you can eliminate unnecessary costs for your medical practice.
Upgrade the EMR Technology You Use
If your goal is to reduce your operating costs and have a more profitable medical practice, you have to take steps to upgrade your current technology. This is especially important when it comes to organizing and managing your patients’ health records.
Thanks to new advancements with EMRs (electronic medical record systems), now is a good time to invest in an upgrade. When you do this, it can help to improve patient outcomes while enhancing care and coordinating with other medical providers your patients see.
Today’s EMR systems will help make your operations more efficient while eliminating the need to hire more full-time employees. In the end, this will help you save even more and increase your profitability further.
As you can see, there are more than a few ways you can reduce costs in your small medical practice. Keep these tips in mind to optimize your operations and increase your overall profitability.
