As reimbursement declines, one way to enhance practice revenue and profitability is by adding ancillary services. Ancillaries assist in maximizing practice profitability, while providing patients with the convenience and continuity of in-house care. Integrated clinical services also can increase productivity, revenue and patient retention.
Private practices are feeling the healthcare market shifts and need new ways to stay independent. Ancillaries are a likely solution for private practices, but knowing how to utilize them is the key to success; here are four ways to incorporate ancillaries in your practice, so you can stay independent in the future.
1) Conduct Patient Demographic and Referral Audits
Are you commonly outsourcing an ancillary service that fits with your current and potential patient population? Integrating services needed by your inbound and outbound referrals provides you with a patient-centered continuum of care with the goal of improving continuity of care, compliance and outcomes.
Before adding ancillaries considered your patient demographics this will help you narrow down what ancillaries will work for you. Relying on reimbursement for services rendered no longer works on its own. Spine practices can differentiate themselves from other general medicine practices by offering specialized ancillary services. Conduct an in-house audit to identify the ancillaries your practice utilizes today. To effectively recognize the needs of the practice, understand your patient demographics—age, income range, education level and severity of cases—and your inbound and outbound referral sources.
2) Determine Needed Resources
Adding physical therapy and other conservative treatment to your practice will grow in importance as we move toward an era where patient information and empowerment sit front and center. Your patients will appreciate not having to go to several different offices for treatment or referrals. Once you’ve identified a list of potential services that fit your practice, you need to understand what providing that service entails: More space, more employees, and more expenses? Physicians generally underestimate the amount of physical space needed and overestimate the current volume of ancillaries they actually use. The business plan must clearly outline positive and negative outcomes in order to support a successful transition.
3) Consider Purchasing Method
As much as your practice would like to only consider the best-case scenario, you must have a plan in place if it doesn’t work out; there is no rationale in spending thousands of dollars to improve your practice just to have it fail in the long run. If you’re concerned about whether or not purchasing is fiscally possible, look into leasing equipment. This allows you the ability to update as technology improves so you are not left with outdated equipment. On average, 20 percent to 35 percent returns are seen on practices that utilize imaging services such as CT and MRI scans.
4) Management
Managing ancillaries is important especially if you want to measure how successful they are or if you are losing money. Remember, ancillaries are also a business, and mismanagement can cause them and your practice to fail. Ask yourself: What do I do well and what can I capitalize on? How will it impact my staff and patients? Is there a demand for the service? Can I do it better than the competition?
Adding ancillary services to your practice can be expensive but once you’ve done the research you may find that an initial expense will pay off long- term. Adding ancillaries will improve the continuity and quality of care received by the patients. Although spine surgery is necessary in many cases there are instances where the patient may want to try other alternatives before opting for surgery. Decide if your practice has both the financial and physical space to support it first. Staying independent is important for spine practices and using ancillaries is a good way to add revenue and maintain independence.
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