How to Improve Your Medical Practice’s Bottom Line

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, many healthcare organizations and practices have faced some tough financial challenges, and many of the organizations entered 2021 operating within limited budget — causing sudden revenue cycle management (RCM) strategies to ensure accurate and complete capture of all reimbursement opportunities.?

As a result, healthcare providers need to consider significant changes to maintain their revenue.? While change is never easy, it’s not too late to improve your practice’s bottom line.

What care providers can do right now is address the areas that will have the biggest impact on the bottom line to stay ahead of the competition, even by doing the strategies without losing revenue..?

Medical practices, hospitals, and virtual healthcare providers of any size are increasingly aware that they need to balance revenue with focusing on their relationships with their patients.

Patient satisfaction is essential to your bottom line — after all, medicine is a people-centric business. You want to provide exceptional customer service to your patients, but the level of your commitment to good service must depend on your ability to create balance in providing exceptional patient experience and quality service to improve the bottom line.

Following, we will examine 9 suggestions to improve your bottom line.?

9 ways to improve your medical practice’s bottom line

As you’re dealing with rising operating costs, you need every tool at your disposal to keep your practice profitable. The nine strategies offer ways to increase your revenue while lowering your operating costs.??

Build an Online Presence

Your online presence is crucial. If your practice doesn’t have a website or social media, you’re falling behind. Based on the national survey conducted by Pew Internet Project, 72% of women have searched for medical information online and 73 million people (62% of online users) in the U.S. have searched for health information online.

According to a study commissioned by NCR Corporation, 72% of patients are more likely to choose a healthcare provider that offers features and services where they can interact via mobile device or computer over a provider that does not. Furthermore, 76% of consumers find waiting at a hospital or doctor’s office the greatest frustration they face at a healthcare appointment.

Building an easy to navigate website is a great first step, but that is just the beginning. Make sure your practice is updated in online directories, make a profile on the major review sites, and create a social media profile for your practice. These tips will increase your hit frequency in online searches. Plus, it makes things easier for your current patients.

Improve Your Collections?

Collections can be stressful and it’s often an issue for many medical practices, especially with the increasing number of patients on high-deductible health plans.?

According to the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) , 20% of most medical practices’ revenue comes from patient co-pays, and yet most physicians only collect 60% of what’s due. If you’re having difficulty, it could be worth it to hire a collection agency. Otherwise, re-evaluate your overall collections strategy.

Offer After-Hours Virtual Visits

One of the best ways to increase revenue is by offering after-hours virtual visits.These convenient appointments, can help you fit more appointments in a day — something most other medical practices don’t do..?

Offering after-hours visits from your home is another option. Take after-hours urgent patient calls as chargeable video visits.?

Motivate Your Team

Your medical staff is your most valuable resource. Encourage your team every day and offer positive feedback frequently. Make sure they feel like their voice is being heard, appoint the head of a project, and schedule one-on-one meetings to check in.?

Make Scheduling Easier

Optimizing your appointment schedule ensures your day is well spent. By integrating Curogram’s unique appointment scheduling system into your practice, you can optimize your patient flow and limit bottlenecks and long wait times and reduce appointment wait times.

Virtual visits can help you address scheduling issues because they provide flexibility. You can easily utilize a virtual visit in the case of a last-minute no-show. Additionally, unlike a walk-in, the patient doesn’t have to spend hours in the waiting room until you’re free. Furthermore, minor urgent care needs will no longer send your patients to the nearest clinic for treatment.

By integrating online appointment scheduling into your practice, you can avoid or reduce patient no-shows and late cancellations that only reduce your practice’s revenue each year. Many patients don’t have much time on their hands especially when they have work, taking care of their family, or drive through traffic to get to your office. With online appointment scheduling, you are also offering patients a way to do virtual visits from their homes that can be effective instead of adding a cancellation policy with a fee. If patients don’t need to spend time in traffic or need to take time off from work to see you, they’re less likely to skip appointments.

Automate Patient Communication?

If you patients have questions, they no longer have to call your office. Automated messaging software provided by Curogram can send appointment messages (e.g., follow-up, next scheduled appointment, and appointment reminders) to patients so your staff doesn’t have to. These messages don’t need to be generic, templated notifications either — What’s more, these automated messages can be customized to the individual patient.?

The personalized, 2-way text messaging software will help your practice stand apart, helping you keep existing business and increasing your patient referrals. That means increasing revenue.

Manually scheduling appointments and reminding patients of those appointments comes at a cost. For example, your practice handles an average of 20 appointments a day, and each appointment requires five minutes on the phone, your front desk is losing almost two hours of productivity every day.?

Furthermore, your patients don’t want phone calls as reminders; missed phone calls and voicemails are why 22% of patients skip their scheduled appointments .?

Understand Revenue Cycle Performance

Healthcare providers need to understand their revenue cycles so they can identify opportunities, strengths, and weaknesses. If healthcare managers have a clear understanding of their organization’s revenue cycle, then they can determine where to allocate funds and resources.

It’s also important for practices to also identify bottlenecks in operations. One way a hospital or provider can understand its revenue cycle performance and identify bottlenecks is through analytics. Revenue cycle analytics and financial data can help you visualize your cycle with graphs or charts.

Invest In Health IT Systems

Another way healthcare providers can improve their bottom line and run practice efficiently is by using effective technologies. Many providers can use more advanced technology as a way to significantly decrease the number of unnecessary tests without affecting patient care quality. While some organizations use clinical decision support systems to achieve positive financial outcomes, these systems allow providers to oversee laboratory utilization.

In addition, with health IT systems, providers can reduce medication errors. If hospitals and other medical practices can avoid making prescription placement errors, less money will be spent on reordering the correct prescriptions.

Boost Patient Satisfaction By Providing Quality Customer Service

If patients are satisfied with their healthcare experience, they are more likely to return. This is highlighted in as report showing that increased patient satisfaction correlates with higher healthcare profit margins. For example, American hospitals that offer a superior patient experience increased net margins by 50% or more compared to those that provided an average customer experience.

When patients feel satisfied with their experiences, they come away with a positive perception of the entire healthcare facility. Alternatively, when patients are unhappy with the service of their providers, they are likely to complain, have a negative perception of a facility, and post a disparaging rating online

Following these strategies to improve your practice’s bottom line can lead to better patient outcomes while increasing your revenue. Make sure that the healthcare software you integrate into your system is HIPAA-compliant and boasts advanced features that will give your practice an edge.?

Book On-Demand Anytime With Curogram’s Online Appointment Scheduling

Many patients look for a physician on a daily basis, as 84% of patients use online sources to find a provider they can trust before booking an appointment. It was reported last 2019 that? 64% of medical practices in the U.S. offer online appointment scheduling for patients.

Curogram is an easy-to-use HIPAA-compliant telemedicine software that offers convenient online appointment scheduling for your patients. With Curogram, you can create a better? healthcare experience and improve patient satisfaction.

When prospective patients see that you’re offering seamless online scheduling, their provider search process will likely end and they might book directly with you instead. Best of all, patients can book anytime, even outside of your normal office hours. All of these factors will? improve your bottom line.