Dr. Harb spoke with Becker’s about how he’s approaching these challenges.
Note: This conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
Question: What’s become easier about running your practice in recent months? What remains a challenge?
Dr. Matthew Harb: It has become very hard to talk about things that have gotten easier, and the biggest reason I say that is because physician reimbursement for office visits as well as for procedural reimbursement continuously declines. Running a practice depends entirely on resources, which directly impact efficiency. Efficiency is based on resources. How many patients you can see in a certain amount of time depends on how much ancillary staff you can hire to assist you along the way. So when you’re in a constant state of decreasing reimbursement increasing overhead, everything becomes more challenging.
Q: How are you approaching those challenges?
MH: We’re trying to maintain the current rates that we have. Our practice is unique in that we’ve combined with other private practices to allow us to have a little bit more leverage when it comes to negotiating. But as these pay cuts come in, it becomes more challenging. As Medicare reimbursement decreases, the private insurers follow. So typically, private insurers will reimburse more than Medicare, but that declines as well. Then if you look at staff salaries, office equipment costs, billing expenses, office rent and injection medications, all of these costs are rising. So in order to try to maintain the same amount of revenue, you have to see more patients in a shorter amount of time, and ultimately that takes away a little bit from patient care or trying to create a very nice patient experience.
Q: How are you thinking about recent concerns with tariffs and medical supply costs?
MH: I think everyone’s trying to figure that out. One major concern for us, across multiple locations, is the potential rise in costs for durable medical equipment, braces and office supplies.
We haven’t directly seen that yet. Then, on the hospital and surgical center side, costs for equipment like drapes, surgical instruments and medications could potentially increase. But I can’t say we’ve seen any of that quite yet.
I think it’s still too early to tell or make predictions along that line, as far as what will happen. If supplies become too expensive from one source or from an international source, then it may make more sense to look locally. But items and equipment come from various sources, and at the end of the day, patient safety comes first. We obviously want to try to maintain a low overhead in any areas we can safely do that. Time will tell what effect tariffs will have on us.