How much time does your orthopedic practice lose to small inefficiencies on a daily basis? How much lost time does that add up to over the course of a week, a month, or a year? Are resources getting wasted due to inefficiencies in the practice? Almost every orthopedic clinic has at least some waste in its processes. By eliminating that waste, clinics can improve their return on investment (ROI) for every dollar they spend on their operations.
Finding ways to eliminate inefficiencies is a crucial skill for orthopedic surgeons, as it helps them save time and improve their cash flow. In this post, we’ll cover some common waste factors and some ways to improve efficiency.
There are many ways that a clinic can end up wasting resources. To eliminate wasted resources in everyday processes, it’s important to know what the biggest sources of waste are. Some of the most common sources of waste include:
How much time do you spend on paperwork for every patient you see? If you’re anything like the average orthopedic surgeon, you probably spend several hours on paperwork on top of the time you spend actually helping patients. This is almost like having a second full-time job that sucks up all of your time and energy.
According to the American Medical Association, 32% of doctors (in all specialties) spend 20 or more hours per week on paperwork and other administrative tasks, while 38% spend between 10 and 19 hours per week on these tasks.
Orthopedic physicians tend to see more patients per day than doctors in other specialties, so they have even more paperwork that they need to keep up with. For example, a general practitioner in a primary care facility might see 10-15 patients per day. Meanwhile, an orthopedic specialist might see upwards of 60 patients in a day. Even if paperwork only took five minutes per patient, that’s still five hours of extra work per day. Shaving just one or two minutes off of each patient’s paperwork could save an entire day’s worth of work each week.
Orthopedic surgeons often have to schedule specialized surgical procedures for their patients. However, navigating the complex web of what insurance providers (and other payer organizations) will or won’t cover can be a massive headache. Some insurers may take forever to approve a specific procedure, refuse to cover a procedure that should be within the patient’s policy, or change their billing codes so that previously accepted codes stop working.
This often delays the surgeon’s ability to schedule a surgery for a patient. This not only delays the patient from receiving necessary medical care, but it can also keep the clinic from being able to collect on those surgeries—delaying cash flow.
Orthopedic clinics often need to have a steady supply of both durable medical equipment (DME) and single-use supplies on hand for different procedures. When supplies run short, the clinic runs the risk of not being able to perform certain services that patients need. On the other hand, ordering too much means wasting money on extra storage space or on supplies that aren’t going to be used in the foreseeable future.
So, orthopedic clinics need to have a system in place to manage the ordering of new supplies to prevent both shortages and overages of specific items.
It can be frustrating for any orthopedic surgeon to provide a patient with necessary care only to be refused by the patient’s payer organization when the bill gets sent out. When claims for services rendered are rejected, it can have a significant impact on the clinic’s income.
First, the clinic needs to examine the reason for the rejection and determine how it can be overcome. Sometimes, this can be as simple as resubmitting the claim with a modified billing code. At other times, the clinic may not be able to collect from the payer and may need to recoup its costs from the patient directly. Either way, the orthopedic ROI for services provided is delayed or lost.
When a patient doesn’t show up for a visit (whether it’s because they’re not engaged with their health care needs or are dissatisfied with the clinic), that can be a drain on the clinic’s resources as staff are forced to wait for a patient who isn’t coming.
Why? Because, for every no-show, orthopedic surgeons have to sit on standby just in case the patient arrives late, other patients are forced to wait a bit longer for service, and fewer people get seen each day—which hurts the clinic’s revenue.
Nobody’s perfect. Everybody will make a mistake sooner or later when submitting a form, image request, or some other piece of manual paperwork. The problem in an orthopedic clinic is that everyone is pressed for time—from the orthopedic surgeon, to their assistants, to the front office staff.
With so much pressure and so little time, it’s all too easy for mistakes to be made on manually-filled paperwork. This can lead to delays from claims rejections, being unable to find misfiled paperwork, and other issues later on.
So, how can a clinic address the sources of waste outlined above? One solution is to use technology to help improve the consistency, speed, and efficiency of related tasks. Here are a few ways that technology like orthopedic-exclusive Electronic Health Records (EHR) solutions and other software can help:
There are many ways to use orthopedic software to eliminate inefficiencies and improve profitability in an orthopedic practice.
If you’re ready to revolutionize your orthopedic clinic to save time and money while maximizing revenue, reach out to Phoenix Ortho to get more information about our orthopedic-exclusive software solutions!