How To Optimize Clinical Productivity Through Outsourcing

What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is obtaining goods or services from an outside or foreign supplier, especially in place of an internal source. There are many reasons why businesses outsource their services, including but not limited to revenue growth, operational efficiency, and expertise in specialization. Outsourcing has grown significantly in the past decade due to the increasing demand for particular services within almost every industry. Today, we see companies outsourcing services that provide support and assistance to the central infrastructure of the company. This is no different for the healthcare world. With the growth of technology and medical advancement, your physicians are being pulled in more directions than ever. And with the increasing workload practices, there’s never been more need for outside assistance. The most essential function of a physician’s office is to serve patients and provide them with the best possible care.

Outsourcing your practice’s services can bring patient care back into focus while improving overall clinical productivity. This guide will walk you through the benefits and different types of outsourcing services and how choosing a dedicated outsourcing company can benefit you and your practice.

Outsourcing in the Healthcare Industry

Now more than ever, physician offices are seeing the advantages of outsourcing. Here are all of the ways outsourcing can boost clinical productivity in your practice:

Lowered costs Outsourced services are duties that additional in-house employees would have otherwise carried out. Medical outsourcing companies handle the hiring and training their employees, saving you and your practice money. In addition, outsourcing services serve as a springboard to boost profit margins, saving money in the long run.

Specialization Many of the duties expected of physicians and their medical staff require intricate attention to detail. Outsource providers are specialized and highly skilled in their craft, meaning their tasks are done efficiently and effectively.

Fewer errors Outsource providers, since they are specialized in their line of work, are focused solely on the task at hand. Things like medical billing and updating patient health records require full attention and complete accuracy–a luxury that a quality outsourcing provider yields.

Mitigated Physician Burnout Physician burnout is a real challenge that physicians everywhere are experiencing more and more. Emotional and physical exhaustion, a reduced sense of accomplishment, and a loss of meaning for work all contribute to eventual physician burnout. Delegating menial tasks to outsourced providers takes the busy work away from physicians, allowing them to focus more on what they love.

Better patient care: The most crucial reason physicians outsource their services is to eliminate distractions from their biggest priority–their patients. Few physicians enter their profession with an interest in accounting or administrative tasks. Outsourcing essential functions is an excellent way to bring the focus back to the patient.

Medical Outsourcing: Every business is different. For example, services that benefit a law office differ significantly from those that help a veterinary clinic. For a physician’s office, the purpose of outsourcing lies in the ability to spend more time with patients and less time working on menial tasks. Physicians outsource typical services: calling services, human resources, medical billing, medical transcription services, and EHR integration. Let’s look deeper into these outsourcing services and how they can help productivity in your practice.

Where Can a Third Party Help Your Office

A physician’s work is never done. Whether it’s a question regarding a diagnosis or needing to speak with a medical professional, patients must always have a point of contact with their physician’s office. More and more clinical offices are outsourcing call services to lessen the load when contacting patients. Medical call centers can be used for referrals, prescriptions, scheduling, and education. Human resource (HR) functions are essential for any business, especially health practices. Hiring, firing, compensation, labor law compliances, training, and employee relations are all key functions of an HR department. Hiring the right staff is especially important in the medical field due to the liability associated with the profession. In addition, physician offices require a highly specific hiring and training process, making the need for high-functioning HR even greater. With a physician’s already demanding work schedule, there isn’t enough time in the day to also function as an HR director.

Here’s how outsourcing your human resources team can increase productivity in your practice.

• Higher productivity in office due to less volume of calls
• Better patient satisfaction due to reliable and personalized communication
• Leading to a higher potential for ROI
• Improved patient management
• Less time spent hiring and training, more time spent with patients
• Improved quality of work due to the elimination of HR duties
• Increased knowledge base
• Less time allocated to administrative tasks

Contact & Call Services

The documentation and data entry required to maintain comprehensive, accurate patient charts have grown tremendously. Medical transcription outsourcing services allow physicians to devote more time to their patients and less to other organizational departments.

These services include recording medical backgrounds, patient symptoms and concerns, and transcribing general medical data.

• Allows for more focus on the patient and their diagnosis rather than taking notes and updating records during the patient visit
• Allows for more extended patient visits due to less time being spent on paperwork
• Medical transcriptionists are completely focused on taking notes and capturing details, leaving less room for error
• Reduced operating and maintenance costs Benefits Medical

Transcription Services Due to the ever-growing medical landscape, medical billing has become increasingly demanding. Not only does medical billing require a lot of time, but it also requires advanced skills and knowledge of the process. Outsourcing for medical billing services is a straightforward process that involves documents being scanned and sent electronically to the provider. Once received, the medical billing service providers handle all data entry and claim submission. Note: The process is even more straightforward for practitioners with an Electronic Health Record system (EHR). The patient’s billing information is stored in the EHR and electronically transmitted to the billing service, eliminating the need to send paper records to the billing service.

• Ensures billing compliance
• Less vulnerability and disruption in cash flow
• Gets rid of the “dirty work” associated with billing, including following up on rejected claims, pursuing delinquent accounts, and sending invoices to patients
• Less expensive than an in-house operation
• Better consistency and fewer billing errors

Medical Billing

Each patient visit requires accurate documentation of symptoms, diagnoses, and other essential information. That information is then translated into specific medical coding, which uniformly communicate between different practices and, most importantly, insurance companies. Insurance providers use the code to adequately bill and reimburse your patients, making the need for accurate coding essential to your practice. A trained medical coder will analyze the data, verify the validity of the diagnoses, and seek clarification when conditions or diagnoses are not documented. Additionally, coders are trained to understand the physician’s intent, like a medical transcriptionist. They can recognize medical treatments, medications, errors, and everything else.

• Coding accuracy that leads to accurate reimbursements
• Less time and money spent in the HR department
• More time for core business activities
• Specialized service leads to higher efficiency

Medicine isn’t the only thing advancing these days– health records are too. Medical health records have shifted from paper to electronic, making it possible to view and update charts from multiple locations. An Electronic Health Record (EHR) system is where you electronically store and update patient medical records. It’s likely that your practice already has an EHR system in place. The question is, how integrated are your services into that system? Health records, to optimize productivity, should be organized, clean, and easily digestible. Although EHRs are meant to speed up the process of recording patient information, a confusing or difficult-to-use system could slow you down. Hiring an outsourcing company that is fully equipped to integrate into your EHR system is just the thing that saves you any hassle. Services like medical transcription and billing require that your outsource provider integrate seamlessly into your EHR system.

• Creates faster, more accurate records
• Better documentation leads to better patient care
• Reduces point-and-click work for physicians
• Less time spent on documentation, more time spent with patients

Where to Start

Now that you know the benefits of outsourcing and the different types of services available, it’s time to decide which services suit your practice–and how to choose the right company. We know it can be not very safe to know where to start. When selecting a company to outsource work to, you should look for one that can fit seamlessly into your workflow. … Understand your physicians and their intent. … are specialized in what they do. … allows customization of their services. Every practice differs, so you must choose a company that fits your staff and needs. Asking these critical questions will ensure the company you’re pairing with is right for your practice. Many physicians find that–with the amount of documentation needed for proper patient care– hiring a medical transcription company is the answer to having a more productive practice. Not only can a medical transcription company provide highly accurate documentation and EHR integration, but they can also make sure your practice remains HIPAA compliant.

Fortunately, at DataMatrix Medical, we aim to provide just that with excellent service and support. Our medical transcriptionists are dedicated to producing quality, accurate medical transcription services, all while integrating seamlessly into your EHR system and providing the proper data security. We know that choosing to outsource services for your practice isn’t something you take lightly. If you’re ready to jump to a more highly productive practice, or would still like to learn more about outsourcing, we’d love to help.

To learn more about how outsourcing services can increase the productivity of your practice, get in touch with one of our representatives