Ways to Improve Medical Practice Cash Flow
Ever since the introduction of medical practice units, they are constantly striving to lend the best possible care to experienced doctors. Besides, these practices are also edging each day past the traditional methods of diagnostics, and are constantly being equipped with the latest machinery and trends in patient care.
However, one thing is for certain medical practices always need to have a good flow of cash, in the form of revenues to make all of these possible. Therefore, it is important that medical clinics and practices build strong streams of revenue and monitor, maintain, and gradually enhance them.
Financial management should be optimum in order to tackle the cash flow issues. But apart from that the cash flow issues should be identified and mitigated in order to get a growing medical system.
If you are an owner, manager, or one who is in charge of a medical practice and want to know what are the most common issues that act against the improvement of the medical practice's cash flow, then the next section will cover it all.
Major cash flow management issues in medical practices
Cash flow has always been identified as one of the major pain points in many different industries including the healthcare sector. Along with stagnant growth and incurring losses, medical practices can suffer much due to the drying of revenues.
Here's a list of some of the major cash flow management problems for medical practices :
Delays in the reimbursement of insurance
The health insurance markets covered around 179 million individuals (54.7% of the U.S. population) and 45 million individuals (13.7% of the U.S. population), for group insurance and personal insurance markets respectively. Therefore, it goes without saying that an increasingly large number of the patients that the medical practices see day in and day out are insured. However, sometimes the insurances take more time than usual, and this also affects the cash flow.
High operating costs
A medical unit or practice is a considerable investment. Besides, most of such investments are for the long term and usually have high recurring maintenance expenses. The rent of the place, cost of utilities, medical supplies, and miscellaneous accessories, all of these can add up to a significant amount, which might also be tough to tackle at times, leading to problems in maintaining a positive cash flow all year round.
Staff salaries and benefits typically sum up to be the largest expense for a medical practice, which accounts for nearly 25% of the total revenue or about one-half of the overhead expenses.
Uncertainty in Patient Volume
The number of patients seeing their physicians largely varies on a number of different factors. The dip in the patient volume might severely decrease practice revenue, and is, therefore, particularly identified as one of the major problems in cash flow management.
Slow Payment from Patients
Patient payments or the revenue collected from the patients as consultation fees form a crucial part of the practice revenue. Though most of the patients pay their due consultation fees and make other significant payments to their medical providers in due time, some of them struggle to pay their medical bills due to many unavoidable circumstances.
Close to 70% of medical providers have reported that it takes at least one month or longer to collect fees from patients. This leads to slow payment and even non-payment of medical bills on numerous different occasions.
These slow payment and non-payment issues create huge cash flow problems for the practices that need to cover their operating costs along with many other expenses in time. The payment issues from the patients often lead to the accumulation of debts that are difficult to tackle when expanded. However, with GrowPractice's smart and digital medical billing software and systems, these issues are largely being mitigated.
Inefficient Billing and Collections Processes
The billing process is one of the core operations processes at a medical practice. This desk is responsible for collecting and claiming patient payments, which is necessary for the day-to-day operations of the practice.
Thus, it is important that the practices are equipped with an efficient billing and collections system. This is easier now than ever with GrowPractice's smart digital billing and invoicing software, which helps practices collect copays and payments via instant SMS payment links from the patients in no time.
Rising competition
The competition is always rising regardless of the industry. The medical industry is no longer an exception to it. Today's medical practices face increasing competition from many other new entrants like telemedicine. All of these are also leading to irregular revenues and impacting cash flows.
Countering all of these above is the utmost priority of medical practices now, which will help them steer away from revenue losses, thereby enhancing the cash flow.
7 Effective Ways to Ramp Up Medical Practice Cash Flow!
Enhancing medical cash flow might give practices nightmares, but improving cash flow management is not very difficult if you know the right things.
Here are 7 quick tips to ramp up the cash flow of your medical provider :
Making patient intakes and registrations quick and easy
Patient check-ins and intakes are among the very first steps that come in a patient's journey. These processes help the patients register themselves with their medical providers and convey useful information to them for the future ahead. Making them swift, accurate, and convenient is the dream of every practices.
Around 78% of patients prefer to use a secure online method to access their medical histories and share information with their providers. This can now be possible with the help of GrowPractice's patient and medical practice management software solutions.
Receiving the patient payments right at the time of the visit
The reception of patient payments is crucial to the practices. Collecting payments from the patients often gives practices a hard time. The practices can, however, stay a step ahead of their patients in order to streamline the cash flow. This is possible if they develop a practice of receiving the payments right at the time of their visit.
Identifying insurance eligibility and verifying outstanding balances
It is best to identify the insurance providers and their coverage for the patients early on in the patients' journeys. This will not only save a lot of time for the providers but will also spare them many worries.
The percentage of patients failing to fully pay off their medical bills was last expected to reach 95% when reported in 2020. The average recovery of the patients' bad debts is a little over 21%, as per recent surveys.
Yes, a considerable number of patients have outstanding balances on their accounts, which might either be ignored at first unless it is paid after some time, or dragged on till the end and eventually emerge as bad debts. Checking the outstanding balances of the patients is, therefore, a wise decision for the practices.
Improving the efficiency of the billing process
Over 40% of the patients reported that their billed amount is incorrect. This is a widespread notion that needs to end, in order to improve practice credibility and increase patient infusion.
Thus, it is necessary to improve the accuracy of the billing desk and make the billing process fast and hassle-free for the patients.
Submitting claims timely
Healthcare insurance claims are popular with patients. Today, over 77% of patients think that the healthcare costs are unpredictable. Besides, healthcare costs have increased significantly over the years. This gave rise to healthcare insurance, which many patients have opted for.
However, the whole insurance process to be completed successfully takes time. This can be streamlined both for the patients and the practices by implementing dependable billing software like the one GrowPractice offers. Along with that, the claims need to be timely submitted by experienced and efficient medical staff in order to get timely responses.
Engaging the patients completely
Patient engagement is one of the major practices that providers need to focus on. Enhancing patient engagement is directly responsible for lifting the patient satisfaction rate. Engaging patients by providing them crucial healthcare information, extending a 2-way communication process from GrowPractice, attending to them adequately during their visits, and more can work greatly towards improving the overall engagement.
Implementing integrated software for billing and EHR
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are one of the latest innovations in the medical industry. These ease the way patients' sensitive information (PHR) is stored and managed digitally. GrowPractice offers secure and easily accessible medical practice management software that also comes with the EHR facility. The GrowPractice software systems automatically integrate the patients' data into EHR so that the patients can complete their registration process anytime and easily access them from anywhere.
Offering convenient payment plans for patients
Healthcare costs often go beyond the regular. However, paying for all of it in one go becomes difficult for many patients. Therefore, for such instances, medical providers need to be flexible. However, for such patients, it is important that the practices develop suitable patient payments and also train the staff to educate the patients appropriately, track the payments, and duly collect them.
Improving denial management
Claims denials are a part and parcel of medical practices. However, reducing the denials and managing them efficiently to steer them in the positive direction is the way to go for the practices. This can be done by hiring experienced healthcare professionals in the claims department and encouraging them to timely follow up, and resubmit the claims with the information required. improved communication and swift response.
Following up with the patient collections
Following up with the patients for varied reasons including that of the collections is essential for medical practices.
58% of the patients, consisting chiefly of Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen Xers, believe that responsiveness to follow-up questions by email or phone outside of the appointment crucially adds to their overall satisfaction.
Therefore, a medical practice that is poor in follow-up has markedly fewer chances of winning against others that are focussing on the patient follow-up process.
Join Hands with GrowPractice for Proven Solutions to Cash Flow Issues
GrowPractice is one of the most esteemed providers of patient and medical practice management solutions that come with proven solutions to some of the major cash flow issues, thereby streamlining the cash flow management of medical practices.
Some of the smart solutions provided by GrowPractice are :
24x7 appointment schedulers
Online patient intake forms
Instant online method of payments
Effective follow-up measures
HIPAA-compliant two-way texting methods
Smart patient satisfaction surveys and reviews
Customizable patient workflow
So, stop waiting for your competitors to have an edge over you. Be the leader in growth by embracing GrowPractice's medical practice management software!
