THRIVING AS AN INDEPENDENT DOCTOR IN CHALLENGING AREAS, Part II

Last week, we talked about the challenges facing a fictional doctor, Dr. Janelle Smith, a young endocrinologist trying to serve the South Side of Chicago as an independent practitioner. When we left off, she was facing an impossible choice: stay in her private practice but barely scrape by, or join a large hospital and let go of her dream to serve her community. But it's a false choice, because all those problems we described actually have solutions.

Let’s take her EHR. Her total annual costs, including maintenance, updates, and training, for her current system exceed $25,000 for the practice. And that’s just what she pays to her provider. What she’s not capturing in that figure is the value of the time wasted by her and her PA due to how complicated and user-unfriendly her system is. So she sits down and runs the numbers: she and her PA are averaging 10 minutes per patient encounter and they see 40 patients a day. To her horror, she realizes that almost an entire headcount is dedicated just to charting. But a tablet-optimized, Cloud-based EHR like NextGen’s EMRx costs a fraction of that, and because it was designed by doctors, it’s intended to get doctors through the charting process as quickly as possible, in an average of just two minutes per encounter. Her first year savings alone are going to be almost $10,000 just for the software, and it leads to productivity gains equating to getting ⅔ of a new headcount for free. She almost has enough to add a second PA and expand her practice. And she’s just getting started.
 
Now let’s look at her overhead. She has a staff of five, including herself. Of those, three produce no revenue whatsoever and are not involved in providing care to her patients. They spend their days in purely administrative tasks, as noted above. But how much of that work is even necessary? Very little of it. With a full-feature practice and revenue cycle management suite, claims are generated automatically based on the integrated EHR, and reviewed by experts who handle claims for many offices, getting her practice out of the billing and claims business. (Any self-pay bills can be printed with a push of a button.) And because those claims are scrubbed by the advanced iClaim claims management system, the rejection rate is under 2%, and the payments hit Dr. Smith’s account within just a few days, thanks to the separate clearinghouse the system uses.
 
Patients can now fill out their paperwork in advance through the patient portal. They can also submit their medical records requests there, make appointments, and even pay their bills. And all benefits verifications are now automated and executed with the push of a single button when the patient checks in. And denials? A  thing of the past thanks to a rigorous and automated verification system.
 
So the work of three staff who had been working 45-50 hours a week can now be done by two staff members working 40 hours a week. Now Dr. Smith has a receptionist/admin working no overtime and a far less stressed-out office manager working a normal schedule. Including overhead, salaries, and overtime, she is saving over $50,000 a year. That’s the rest of the money she needs to add that second PA or a nurse practitioner!
 
She also implements ChoicePay, cutting her credit card transaction fees to 1.79%, saving her money, allowing her to take payments online, and giving her a fully HIPAA-compliant merchant services solution that is seamlessly integrated with her billing system.
 
Her overall financial situation starts to improve dramatically as her AR days fall and she all but eliminates write-offs and bad patient debt caused by denials. Cash flow is excellent, with payments coming in within days of service provision. She’s no longer worried about making payroll. Her staff of five is now three healthcare providers, all of whom are caring for patients and generating revenue. She’s thriving. She’s able to dedicate more hours to her free clinic. She’s no longer living month to month; on the contrary, she’s making bold plans to expand to a second location.
 
As you look back through this scenario and consider the impact on the South Side, you can see the obvious benefits in terms of keeping quality care in the area and helping a local practice thrive. But you might have one concern. What about that biller? Yes, the practice still employs five people, but that biller is out of a job, and that isn’t good for the community. That’s why Fast Layne Solutions is proud to announce an initiative to create jobs in the communities we serve by training and equipping claims handlers in those neighborhoods. For example, we are committed to adding one new job for every five providers we serve on the South Side of Chicago. Note we’re saying providers, not clients, here. So a single office with, say, three doctors, one physician’s assistant, and one nurse practitioner would lead to a new job on the South Side. We will provide the training and the equipment, and the claims handlers can not only work from home, but also set their own hours, since we require only that a certain number of claims be processed within a given week. Think about what that means for, say, a single mother. Single mothers in economically vulnerable neighborhoods often struggle to find sustainable employment because working outside the home simply doesn’t pay once you account for childcare. But if you have a job that can be done from anywhere and at any time of day, you have the flexibility to earn a good living while still caring for your children.
 
The term “win/win” is thrown around a lot, but that’s truly what this is. We are giving practices the tools they need not just to survive but thrive in a challenging environment, while also creating new jobs in the community, jobs that involve highly valued, transferable skills.
 
Want to learn more? Email us today and let’s set up a free, no-obligation practice analysis. If we can’t prove that we’ll save you more than we will charge you, we just won’t ask for your business. It really is that simple.