Globotron Blog

By Pascal Helou

New York, NY – The best way to dramatically reduce your costs is to fully understand where your costs are generated. The cost to process a patient is your single greatest costs other than your fixed costs such as equipment, rent, utilities and salaries. We need to determine the time spent by each person involved in processing a patient from the fist time the appointment is made to the payment of the encounter.

Focus on the following:

o     List all forms used for each step.

o     Identify who handles these forms and how much time they spend performing the process.

§         Time spent pulling, filing, and locating patient charts.

§         Handling prescription refill requests.

§         Mailing patient notes.

§         Processing patient check-in/check-out.

§         Transcribing dictation and recovering lost dictation due to misdirection or data corruption.

§         Time spent trying to locate lost charts.

The following table lists the typical steps involved from the time a patient calls for an appointment till the time the encounter is paid. Go through this table and add the time spent by each staff member at each step that applies.

Typical Patient workflow

Once you quantify the total cost to process a patient, you can begin to indentify the areas for the greatest potential for cost savings. Take a look at technologies such as EMR. Perform the same exercise with the notion that you have already implement the EMR solution. Run through the numbers again in the above chart with an EMR process flow to see what kind of savings you can expect.

You will see that the total cost to process patients can be reduced by 50%-85% by implementing an EMR system. Transcription costs can either be eliminated or drastically reduce in a well designed template system.

Conclusion
You cannot begin to reduce your costs unless you understand where your costs are coming from. Perform an audit and document everything involved in processing a patient including every system and form used. Once you determine where the greatest costs are generated, you can begin to look at technologies that will reduce those costs.

By Pascal Helou

New York, NY - Every medical practice can always benefit from an outside perspective on their business. The first thing that you must do is be honest with yourself. Change is not easy and you must be ready and willing to accept positive and negative criticism. A good consultant will tell you the truth, not exaggerate and give you options. They are on your side and are looking out for you, helping you avoid major mishaps, reduce costs and advise you of new technologies that can drastically improve efficiencies and increase your bottom line. I run my practice like an accounting or law firm but focus on business technology. The focus is always on how to align technology to help a practice run more efficiently, provide better services at a lower cost.

A question I am always asked is I am not sure I can afford this and how much does all this costs? The real question is whether you can afford to continue to do business as you currently are. Inefficiency can cost you hundreds of thousands each year while increasing your risks and reducing your bottom line. Proper use of technology results in increased efficiencies and higher profits. Increased efficiencies allow you to drastically reduce costs by having less staff or by having your staff do much more.

Here are the possible savings from implementing an EMR solution:

o     Labor cost savings of $40,250 per year per physicians: It costs $25,000 to $40,000 in labor costs per year per physician by not using an EMR solution and staying in paper. Switching to an EMR solution was demonstrated in a Congressional testimony in 1999 that will save $40,250 per year per physicians. A simple EMR solution can cost as little as $10,000, be implemented in 1-2 days and begin making money for you instantly.

o     Paper storage savings of $32,500 per year: A typical space used to store the paper records is on average 500ft². The average costs for space in NYC of $65 per square foot leads to savings of $32,500 per year. An EMR solution eliminates this expense.

o     Transcription cost savings of $36,000 per year per physicians: A well designed template system in an EMR can eliminated or drastically reduce transcription costs.

o     There are many other costs such as reduced errors, increased collections do to less time required to access information, less risk and lost files.

A 3 provider office yearly savings after implementing an EMR = $261,250 in first year and $1,306,250 after 5 years.

Conclusion
The biggest hurdle you have is to jump in since you are already paying for working inefficiently. Make the investment and start saving hundreds of thousands each year!

The best way to proceed is to hire a local business technology expert to review your office and perform an audit. A technology expert who works with many similar practices can bring tremendous value and insight from other practice implementations, systems and failures. Just like you rely on an accountant for your accounting needs, rely on a business technology advisor for all your technology needs. The key is finding the right set of skills in a technology advisor.

The best technology advisors will have deep knowledge of your business needs, understand the breath of technology that is used in a medical practice, are not tied to any particular solution or technology, are attentive to your needs and are flexible and creative in their solutions. Most of all, they need to have that illusive skill that few true technology experts have, people skills!