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A real-world approach to health care 'reform'
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With the recent election and continued uncertainty about the direction health care "reform" will take, many physicians are uncertain about how to prepare their practices for what is to come. While little is known about how the systematic changes in government-sponsored health care will play out, we do know that physician practices need to be ready for significant financial challenges.
But what can we do today? It seems there are three sensible approaches that any physician office could benefit from right now:
1. Renegotiate your insurance contracts
Many physicians automatically sign new payor contracts when they become available, once their old contract expires, without looking seriously at the payment schedule. Fewer still actually negotiate with payors for favorable terms. Despite payment reductions that are bound to come with time, physicians can increase their top line revenue right now (without performing any additional services) by simply renegotiating old contracts under new, more favorable terms. There is an entire industry of consultants who can help our practices do this, and their services can pay for themselves many times over if we employ the right person.
2. Be more patient-friendly
So many columns about this topic have been written that it has become almost clich?. However, the simplest approach is to "mystery shop" your own practice, hiring an outside service (dozens can be found through a simple Google search) or a friend who is unknown to your employees. Simply calling the office and then going through the steps of coming in with a patient appointment will probably reveal countless untold problems that are so subtle as to not generate complaints by most patients but so obvious as to have a quick remedy. These simple changes to your office system can impact patient-to-patient referrals significantly.
3. Begin offering premium services
The expanding array of premium services available to patients — from premium cataract surgery to LASIK (co-managed if you don't offer these procedures) to hearing services — offer something that can fit in any practice's business model and patient demographic. While this step takes the most effort of all three mentioned here, it offers the best potential. Adding an additional, successful source of revenue is the best way to enhance the health of any struggling business.
With time, we physicians will gain greater understanding of what health care "reform" will truly mean for us. But meanwhile, we have a duty to ourselves and to our patients to prepare for the future with the things we can do now.