Most of us are familiar with the feeling of not knowing where to start when cleaning a messy room. A similar feeling can arise when your HME or pharmacy business is trying to determine the best course of action to get labor output aligned with your workload. On a recent episode of The Modern Healthcare Back Office, our reimbursement experts explain how healthcare providers can accurately assess and solve labor-related shortcomings.
Unfortunately, adding more employees won't solve your production problem. Hiring and onboarding are both time-consuming tasks. Concentrating entirely on bringing in new workers will only put your business further behind the eight ball. When faced with efficiency issues, you must get strategic and resourceful to make the most out of what you currently have.
Step Away
Stepping away from your work when it's piling up can be a difficult task in and of itself. However, it's a necessary step when figuring out how you can best utilize the technology and data currently at your disposal. Initially, it may feel unnatural, but you'll come to find you have to slow down and look around in order to speed up improving your revenue cycle.
Collaborate
Instead of hiring more people, focus your efforts on developing ways you can collaboratively harness as much analytic and business process technology available to your business. Analytical-based technology enables companies to calculate specific metrics and forecast future figures and outcomes. Business process technologies are the hardware and software companies use to complete work tasks.
Analytical and Business Process Technology
The majority of quick fixes that provide a small amount of immediate relief are data analytic-based technology, like turning on a flag in a database. However, around 80% of inefficiencies are due to poor technology-based business processes. To learn where you stand from a production standpoint, you need to examine each step of the billing process one by one.
Inspect Processes Individually
Concentrating on a particular component's functionality quickly brings issues to the surface. Inefficiencies that are going unnoticed during the process may be able to be resolved through augmented technology. Once you determine the most beneficial business process tech solution to implement, you'll better understand your labor needs.
Contrary to most providers’ initial reaction to production issues, new hires are not a quick fix. In the context of a wheel, people are just a spoke, and technology is the hub. Your business must optimize all factions of its technological practices before attempting to resolve other unrelated issues. Hear what else our experts had to say about combating productivity problems:
Prochant has a proven track record of helping HME and pharmacy providers meet their financial goals. Our scalable solutions, years of experience, and advanced technology provide best-in-class results to the healthcare community. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, our client base includes national pharmacy and HME providers and health systems.