5 Practical Ways to Ensure That Your Independent Practice Stays Profitable
Independent doctors are invaluable to the healthcare system, doing everything from improving patient engagement to providing high-quality care at a low cost. However, independent practitioners also have to deal with several challenges. These challenges may include government regulations, complex payment processes, staffing issues, negotiations with insurance companies, and the rising costs of care.
In order for independent practices to maintain a strong standard for the quality of care, they also need to earn a profit and maintain a steady cash flow. When independent practices can’t manage their own overhead costs, though, they may be forced to close the business, sell the business, or merge with other healthcare practices or organizations.
In this article, we’ll explain five of the best things physicians can do to ensure their independent practice generates the steady revenue needed to maintain profits and guarantee that the practice remains independent.
Practical Ways to Ensure Your Independent Practice Stays Profitable
Building a healthy business and a profitable, independent practice requires medical practices to adopt strategies that facilitate steady revenue.
Here are five of the best ways to maintain a profitable independent practice:
1. Keep Your Appointment Schedule Full
Most patients appreciate receiving a call or text reminding them of their appointments. Sending timely reminders shows patients that you care and that you want them to maintain their health. Also, they help you maintain a fully booked schedule, which is crucial when managing a profitable independent practice.
When you fail to send reminders to patients, you may find that many patients miss their scheduled visits. That leaves a part of your appointment schedule vacant and unprofitable. You’ll have to reschedule the appointment, potentially filling a future slot that could have been reserved for another patient.
With several appointment reminder options like phone calls, email, and text messages, you can send timely reminders to anyone, boosting patient engagement. Such patient engagement helps to build and maintain a good working relationship with patients.
Prudent healthcare providers will design or adopt reminder systems to manage their appointments. Independent doctors can use these reminder tools and solutions to remind their patients of appointments and maintain a full appointment schedule.
2. Fill Gaps in Care
The US healthcare system spends about $216 billion annually to manage chronic illnesses like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Many of these patients go undertreated and many more go undiagnosed. Independent doctors can fill these gaps in health care by proactively managing patients with known conditions and encouraging regular visits to better identify those conditions in others.
By utilizing tools like appointment reminders and care coordination tools like QPathways, independent practices can stay on top of the care their patients need. From scheduling regular office visits to performing the necessary tests at appropriate intervals, physicians can more effectively monitor their patients’ progress.
When doctors are more deliberate with patients with chronic conditions and special needs, that helps them to manage such conditions effectively. They’ll help their patients manage their conditions, improving health outcomes and attracting other patients with such conditions.
Thus, they don’t just fill the gaps in care but increase their patient volume and cash flow. All these and other proactive measures will ensure that optimal care is available to chronically ill patients, which will equate to higher revenue and profits in the long run.
3. Provide Online Care
Building online care for your practice is an excellent strategy to reach and gain more patients and boost revenue. Generally, patients prefer services that make their life easier. Having a virtual care presence allows a medical practice to provide better and easier care to patients.
Online appointments are faster, reduce staff time, and require no office space or medical supply expenses. Additionally, online care can be particularly beneficial to older patients and others with mobility issues who may struggle to physically attend an appointment. A well-designed web portal allows them to receive care online and visit only when necessary.
Healthcare practices can also boost their online reputation by encouraging patients to comment positively and post testimonials on their healthcare practice websites like HealthGrades. These online reviews help practices win the attention and trust of potential patients.
4. Hire an Expert Billing Company
Imagine losing out on payments because of a poor billing system. To build a profitable independent practice, you’ll need to collect full payment for every service you offer, and in-house billers don’t have the depth of manpower or breadth of expertise to achieve the best possible results from both insurance companies and patients. They may also have other responsibilities and struggle to keep up with this massive workload, unlike the teams at a big billing company like TRIARQ.
Working with billing experts allows practices to focus on patient care, which is why they opened their practices in the first place. By hiring an expert to manage their billing, they enable all staff members to focus on other tasks: specifically, improving patient care, satisfaction, and retention.
Working with TRIARQ helps you access their team of expert billers who can handle any payment-related situation. They use the most advanced technology to ensure medical practices collect every penny they earn. With TRIARQ, independent doctors are certain to receive their payments from patients and insurance companies.
5. Explore Value-Based Care
Value-based care is a type of healthcare that rewards doctors for facilitating demonstrably positive health outcomes at a lower cost. Independent doctors, in our opinion, are in a perfect position to provide high-quality care by being appropriately efficient when treating their patients.
Value-based care requires that practices be transparent with treatment procedures and requirements. To do this, doctors eliminate unnecessary treatments and tests to ensure patients only pay for the treatments they need to live better. When quality measurements are up and costs are down, these value based care programs reward physicians financially.
All in all, value-based care is a great way to strengthen the profitability of an independent practice. In the long run, high-quality healthcare practices are more likely to turn a profit because of their happy, healthy, loyal patients.
TRIARQ: A Management Services Organization Committed to Your Success
Steady cashflow and revenue generation are essential to every independent practice. Independent practices that struggle to generate revenue consistently should consider implementing the strategies that will help them thrive: strategies like keeping appointment schedules full, filling gaps in care, building an online care system, hiring an expert billing company, and exploring value-based healthcare.
TRIARQ is committed to providing healthcare providers with the tools and technology they need to maintain a successful practice. Contact us to see how we can help you run a profitable independent practice without all the hassle.