Steps for Optimizing Practice Profitability during a Crisis

Optimize Your Financial Resources

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, there are several government funds given specifically to eligible providers for lost revenues or healthcare-related expenses. It's important for any provider or practice that's experienced COVID-19-related challenges to research and apply for financial resources to ease any financial pressures. Find out and use the financial resources that make sense for your practice and services. These programs cover forgivable funding to help practices provide payroll and retain employees, emergency advances to offer economic relief, existing debt relief, and more.

Optimize your Business Operations

Your medical practice's revenue cycle begins with the front-line staff processes. If those processes are not as effective as they need to be, the final consequences to practice revenues can be serious.

Keep examine your business operations, make them better and optimized, measure productivity, and be growth-minded about these operations as:

• Optimizing front-line staff processes, operations, including eligibility, verifications, and benefits.
• Recognizing and communicating deductibles to collect patient responsibility before service.
• Tightening prior authorization workflows to check denied claims

Practices must decide whether to implement measures like contactless patient intake, enhanced sanitation, architectural changes, COVID-19 screenings, changes to appointment scheduling, and more. As your practice continues to grow and move forward based on what makes the most sense for their employees and patients, the strength and effectiveness of clinical operations will make a significant variation to revenues long-term.

Billing operations or we can say back-end processes remind us how every buck continues to be important. To maintain a clear picture of where your practice stands financially and what direction you can assume to go in the days ahead keep a track of your key performance indicators (KPIs). Track, calculate and manage KPIs and back-end office operations from the time of submission through A/R follow-up to keep your revenue cycle performing at a high level.

Adopt Telehealth

Accessible anywhere and from everywhere, telehealth services have increasingly become more and more valuable than ever before. Powerful, dynamic, and effective now and beyond the pandemic, limitless options are ready when a practice implements a telehealth platform that works for them. If you have never used and offered telehealth services, it's more important for you than ever before to consider incorporating it as part of your practice.

Now requirements of the patient are changing, and you can make sure you're filling the gap for them by giving multiple treatment options. With comfortable, accessible telehealth technology available and a ready willingness from patients to be treated remotely, now is the opportune moment to implement telehealth in your practice.

Don't leave money on the table

Now you may be seeing fewer patients than before, some of your staff may be working from home as well. Luckily, this circumstance also grants you the time and resources to address the weak points within your revenue cycle. Now is the right time to access and tackle those tedious tasks that everybody appreciates when done but nobody wants to do those tasks.

Here are some key things you should be looking at:

• Reduce Billing Lag. Don't get caught up on charge entry.
• Reduce Posting Lag. Don't get caught up on payment posting.
• Assess how many tasks come in each month, who resolves them, and whether your current task process is efficient.
• Keep an eye on encounter reconciliation. Analyze open/saved encounters, as it can negatively affecting your KPIs.
• Target Bad Debt.
• Follow Up on All Claims.
• Document Your Revenue Cycle Management Process.