"Outsourcing your medical practice business
office workload can lighten the financial burden
as well as provide better efficiency in
your medical practice management."
Outsourcing your medical practice office work is a very practical and reasonable means of remaining financially stable. If you are among a large number of physicians today who are already having financial difficulty keeping your practice doors open, this can be your saving grace.
If you haven’t done the appropriate research that can show you the financial budgeting reasons for considering outsourcing a number of your private medical practice office jobs, you will find good reasons to do so soon. With the increasing and devastating impact of fee restrictions, among other intrusive governmental efforts to sink your ship, you have good reason to start outsourcing today.
The greatest fear about doing this is commonly that of thinking that it costs more to do the outsourcing of such medical practice business office jobs such as medical billing, medical coding, medical office transcription, medical practice marketing of your practice, publishing a newsletter, or even medical practice management than to keep the jobs in-house.
Amazingly, by outsourcing many of your office jobs you will quickly discover the incredible value of your time... a factor you sometimes don’t recognize.
The concept of outsourcing to save money on employee wages and benefits that you would have to pay otherwise is also a focus of the giants in industry in our country today. They have the experts who document the significant economic outcome of doing so. You can benefit as well because you know it works for any business.
When you go that one step further to test the waters, a profound positive change occurs in the efficiency and productivity of your medical practice business.
A few benefits of outsourcing and why productivity is increased...
1. With fewer in-office employees the office is easier to manage. You spend less time in administration and more on seeing patients.
2. The decrease in the number of employees reduces personal conflicts, envy, communication mistakes, and debates about whose job this is, which inevitably happens. It decreases your time spent solving such problems. (See my article about this topic)
3. More space is available in your office for patient care rather than for in-house office employees who are using the space.
4. The fact that you can now see two or more patients than usual will increase your income by a conservative estimate of about $1500 per month or $18,000 per year.
5. Your office becomes much better focused on patients rather than on business jobs that take up everyone’s time with the business interactions of the office staff. All that now happens outside the medical office now… at least most of it.
What is it that keeps medical doctors from outsourcing office business jobs?
- The major reason is that the doctor(s) don’t have the facts and figures in front of their
face to convince them that they can save a lot of office overhead costs by doing so.
- The fear that the person hired for the office job working elsewhere will do a lousy job
and can’t be trusted
- Serious concerns about what to pay the person to keep them from
quitting, keep them loyal, and keep them satisfied
- Medical doctor’s do not like to be the person to hire and fire people or to
make judgments about the applicant’s qualifications.
- The doctor’s "management insecurity"...because he or she may never have had any
prior business experience or business education…fear of making a big mistake
Suggestions about how to select and hire people to do outsourcing jobs...
First, understand that in today’s job market there are millions of people who can’t find a job and are looking for one. It eliminates the problem of having enough applicants. But, when you have a bunch of good applicants, it becomes a problem of choosing the right one.
Choosing the right one for your office work should never be based on looks or other personal biases you may have. The person you want should be chosen by qualifications, experience, and personal work ethics. When someone asks you, “What kind of employee do you want to hire,” tell them a “profitable one.”
The best qualified people are employees that...
- Are dutiful at being on time for work and for working the full day’s working hours
- Can accept criticism and direction as a means of learning and not a cause for anger
- Find working with a team is comfortable... not a threat
- Are constantly trying to learn and improve their job performance
- Accept that in a physician’s office, work hours are sometimes necessary to extend
beyond the normal hours without extra pay, but compensated in other ways
- Understand that other job assignments may occasionally be required beyond those
they were hired to do
- Those with previous medical office experience, especially if they previously worked
in a physician’s office
- Hire slow... Fire fast! Always!!
There are many other qualities to look for that may meet your standards beyond these listed here. These listed are primarily for in-office employees but can be a starting place for hiring an
outsource helper.
Many external outsourced employees work from home. That environment offers many advantages for the worker that enables them to be more efficient and productive.
The absence of phone calls, interruptions by other employees, fixed hours they must work in, and the responsibility of covering for other employees when sick, don’t show up or get swamped and need immediate help, leaves them free to do the expected work faster and more accurately at a time when they can be productively focused.
The business issues you as the medical doctor and boss have to adapt to, and to maintain with any employees, whatever their job position may be, are...
1. Employees do not own your business. You do.
2. Your business is your career and life, and your life is your medical practice business.
4. Employees are not your friends.
5. Employees are not your family.
6. You are not there to make your employees happy. They forget you are there to pay them
for work, and to generate profits.
7. Every single employee, irrespective of how much you pay them, how well you treat them,
or how valuable to the practice they are, will leave your business some time and will need
to be replaced.
8. When employees are not instructed about how you want things done, they will make up
their own ways to do things, use the methods they learned in previous doctor’s offices,
and will always choose the shortcuts to every process they do.
Advice about paying for outsourced jobs...
Payments can be made at an hourly rate or by a job rate. It is the advice of many businesses that
you hire, for example consultants, only on at a "job completion" fee. It’s a fixed cost paid for the
job regardless of problems in doing the job and regardless if the job ends up requiring more
work than expected to complete.
Paying by the hour enables any consultant or external employee to do the work agreed to, but can stretch the hours it takes to get the job done, while costing you more money than necessary.
Check around other medical offices because they usually have some part of their medical practice business outsourced and find out what they are paying their workers (or service company).
Another easy means to judge how much to pay outsourced work is to contact companies like FIVERR.com because outsourced work of many kinds is all they do and are reliable.
Pay rates are negotiable. In this job market, it is highly likely that a new candidate will accept a much lower pay rate than in better economic times just to have a job. You hold the advantage position in this situation. However, there are work rules and laws that fix the baselines for employment even if the work is done at home.
It’s another good reason to pay by the job and not on an hourly rate. Always have a written agreement for every job signed by the independent contractor (outsourced worker). Faxing documents with legal signatures is quick, direct, and not lost in your incoming email tsunami. Faxed documents are legal tender—AND ARE A FREE and QUICK method of communication.
Don’t violate those laws under any circumstances or you open yourself to liability issues should the employee become angry and file a suit against you for many reasons.
You will need an outsourcing manager...
Doctors should be highly protective of their time. Your profitability stems from how efficient you use your medical practice time, especially time in the office. Outsourcing jobs requires time and effort that is better fitted to an office person you trust. One who has the “investigative” mind and compulsive traits to make it happen.
It is also possible to outsource this manager job as well. A part time employee can likely handle this process from home as well as from the office. Your responsibility is to choose what you would like outsourced and how you want it done.
Hand the job to your “outsource manager” to seek out the right and appropriate person, agency, online resources, and lowest cost resources that will do the best work for the money you pay them.
Your outsource manager has an additional task that is just as important...follow-up. Outsourcing a project is one thing, but ensuring that good progress is being made on the project and that it will be done by an agreed-upon date is another.
Resources for outsourcing (Virtual Assistants)...
Online as well as within your own community there are hundreds of places and people who do this type of work for a fee. You must have reliable people who do good, at least reasonable and acceptable, work for you.
You find those people by referral from someone, or from another office, who uses them, or you can assign some less important projects to them to test their ability and response time that meets
your standards.
Some online resources (outsourcing companies) that are well known and have reasonably priced fees for services as of this date, Mar. 2022, are...
- Elance.com (Best of the best)
- Freelancer.com
- Vworker.com (freelancer.com)
- Onlinejobs.ph (Filipino group—very reliable and cheap)
- Guru.com
- Fiverr.com (All work for $5)
- Upwork.com
Significant benefits of outsourcing...
Depending on which GROUP you choose, they can create design graphics, logos, websites, full eBooks, reports, white papers, and much more. You have direct access to individuals who are experts at what they do in all the areas that you or your employees may not.
How the outsourcing of jobs usually works...
These websites used for outsourcing that you need done for your medical practice business all work pretty much the same in format and function. After signing up, you can describe in detail what kind of work you want done and you will be given a quote about your cost to have it done.
Each site will usually publish the details of your project to all its members. Each member then has several options. They can pass up the project being offered or submit an offer back to you stating how much he or she will charge for doing the project. Sometimes, they want to do the project but have certain things, like how soon they would be able to get it done, which you must agree to.
You may receive one or many offers (bids) and fees from the members who are willing to do the work. Then, you have to pick one of them and complete the agreement. The members know that if they do a great job for you that you may choose to have them do all your projects, and they would have a steady repeatable income.
In all cases the more thorough you are at providing the details about your project, like how many pages (if you want it limited to a certain number), the font, the format and style of the document, the drift of the content they will be creating for you, the better and quicker your results will be.
You can request a revision of their work once or twice. You might want to use their data and content and do the revisions yourself. They will do the research on the topic for you, which is the most time consuming part of the job and that will already be done.
Because of the restricted length of this article, you also can google the "freelancer" keyword and find many more.
Comments...
Don’t do any outsourcing of jobs just because it’s the popular thing to do in all businesses today. Do it when you are comfortable that they can do what they say. You decide that based on having them do one or two short of small medical practice management projects for you, or even submit the project to several outsourced employees just to compare results.
My experiences have been good with the few that I have tried out. I do have a preference for the Filipino group primarily because of their fluent English language and intensive research on topics sent to them, which adds credibility and authority to the content... Google loves that, and it helps avoid a “Google Slap.”
Outsourcing your medical office work can make a huge reduction in your overhead expenses.
----Professional Probe----
"It's a job, so what's the big deal?"
It's a financially sound strategy for any medical practice management and business whenever you can relax your tendency to remain tightly in control of every tiny niche of your practice business, which actually wastes your time and increases your expenses.
You may not be aware of the inefficiency of your office staff that you cause by your constantly looking over their shoulder at everything they do. They are more conscientious when you let them work using their own creativeness without bugging them.
Think back to the time when you were tightly scrutinized for the hospital privileges you applied for at the time. Did it bother you, cause some stress for you?
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #37, 3-16-22
