3 Unseen Reasons Your Medical Practice is Losing Revenue
According to recent studies, medical practices lose between 25% and 30% of their revenue due to underpricing, charges that are either missed or not submitted, a lack of proper follow-up, or incorrect coding. Some medical practices turn to electronic health records (EHRs) for assistance in correcting medical billing issues, but they will not be able to solve all of your problems. Some reasons for revenue department shortcomings are difficult to identify, which can be understandably frustrating. Here are three of the unseen reasons why your medical practice may be losing money.
3 Major Reasons Why Your Medical Practice Is Losing Money
1. Unwanted Features of Free EHRs Causing Patients to Leave
Some of the free EHR systems may appear to be exactly what your medical practice requires to become more efficient and manage their expenses. The issue is that these systems sometimes come with some strings attached, most notably that they may have hidden features that your patients may find unappealing.
Patients, for example, could be sent product review emails that appear to be from their doctor. Doctors may be completely unaware that this is happening at all. Patients who are concerned about how their data is being used may object to these features and switch their physician.
2. Overstaffing After Successfully Implementing an EHR System
All you need to do is to move your staff numbers from paper records to your new EHR system. It is the process itself that needs additional help. You will also probably continue to operate your practice during the transition. Then the new system must be learned. All that was having been done; however, you no longer need to have as many employees. Your medical practice needs to be as effective as possible without the help of your additional staff.
3. An Excess of No-Shows
If you have repetitive no-shows, it helps you when you have a medical policy to charge for people, but if you have lots of no-shows, you need to know why and how to resolve this problem. You can have an EHR system or scheduling application that automatically calls patients back when they have scheduled appointments.
It also allows messages to be sent via email or text. Calling a patient towards the end of the day means that they do not pick up, and they try either to cancel or rearrange after your office is already closed.
