Overhead Reduction Services

The following article was published in the Atlanta Hospital News in March, 2009.

Two methods for increasing practice profits are generating higher revenues and reducing operating costs. Previous articles focused on reducing vendor costs to increase profits (e.g., merchant processing and telecommunications). This article addresses the power of effective training on reducing operating costs and generating revenues.

Some practices think of training costs solely as expenses. Forward thinking practices recognize that training costs are also an investment yielding numerous benefits for helping practices deliver quality healthcare while generating profits. You may be interested in Georgia ’s tax credit provision for certain training expenses.

Key benefits from providing high-quality training programs include:

1. Retention of existing patients and acquisition of new patients: Patients may be extremely pleased with the clinical care they receive in your office, yet consider their overall experience unsatisfactory due to poor administrative staff care. Common examples include long waiting times, poor telephone etiquette, perceived uncaring or indifferent staff attitudes, and unresolved billing errors.

Successful practices deliver a positive overall patient experience. Employees are empathetic, helpful, gracious, and eager to please. They deal effectively with challenging patients and handle requests quickly and correctly. They make patients feel valued and welcome. Teaching employees customer service skills and holding them accountable for appropriate behavior are essential.

2. Increased staff productivity and efficiency: Smart practices hire the right employees, assign them the right tasks, and ensure that they perform those tasks correctly. Highly knowledgeable and skilled employees work more efficiently, thereby producing more work in less time and with fewer errors. Practices can use this “saved” time for revenue producing tasks (e.g., new services, collections).

Critical operations such as check-in and check-out, scheduling, collections, coding, and purchasing are more efficiently handled by well-trained employees. Your risk of legal action by regulatory agencies and patients is greatly reduced when employees comply with regulations (e.g., HIPAA) and ensure that patient expectations are exceeded.

3. Increased staff retention: There are many benefits to retaining good employees. Practices save the significant cost of hiring and training new employees. Production is maintained because the practice does not experience a temporary reduction while new employees acclimate themselves to ways your practice operates.

Providing quality training is an effective tool for retaining employees. Many employees consider training essential to keeping them engaged, energized, and happy.

Key considerations for effective training:

1. Provide job descriptions: Develop job descriptions that clearly delineate employee roles and responsibilities and identify specific standards (e.g., AR employees should “Send statements within 48 hours of patient visit.” vs. simply “Send statements.”).

2. Ensure that employees possess the requisite skills and knowledge to perform their roles. Provide the necessary training and mentoring so they may do so.

3. Measure performance: Regularly evaluate performance, and provide constructive feedback. Implement mentoring and remedial training to eliminate performance gaps.

4. Communicate expectations: Practices can more easily hold employees accountable and ensure increased production and efficiency when supervisors clearly communicate expectations.

5. Cross train employees: Cross training is one of the most effective ways to cut costs and ensure smooth functioning of the office. Major benefits include:

Ensuring uninterrupted operations without hiring temporary workers when employees are sick or on vacation (this benefit alone can save significant amounts of money)
Increasing appreciation of one another’s job challenges
Maintaining continuity of office functions if an employee resigns on short notice – especially in a small practice
Increasing the ability of workers to assist one another when workloads are heavy

Effective tips for training programs:

Develop comprehensive policy and procedures manuals
Develop job aids and checklists (e.g., “Six Steps to Check Out a Patient”)
Provide “just-in-time” training (e.g., wait until just before or after upgrading to Office 2007 to train employees rather than too far in advance so they remember what they learned when the software is upgraded)
Provide training that is “just enough” (e.g., mentor employees who needs to learn how to print envelopes in Microsoft Word rather than send them to an all day course)
Take advantage of different training methodologies (e.g., classroom, online courses, web-conferences, mentoring, shadowing employees)

Match training methods to employees’ preferred styles of learning (i.e., visual, auditory, kinesthetic)

Take action now to improve the quality of your patient care and increase profits.

Jeffry Finkel is the President and owner of Overhead Reduction Services, LLC. Jeffry’s B.S. / M.Ed. degrees and certifications are in training and public education. Contact him at Jeff@OverheadReductionServices.com or 404 995-9112