Revenue per visit is flat or decreasing, and costs are escalating. Seeing one more patient per day can help solve these problems. This article provides valuable insight into implementing a Plus 1 Strategy.
The goal of seeing one more patient daily can seem overwhelming to initiate or achieve. However, making minor adjustments to manage your schedule and your patients will help you achieve this goal.
Those adjustments can lead to multiple benefits:
- Improve practice financial health
- Increase provider access for your patients
- Improvements to community health and wellbeing
At Health Prime, we consider Plus 1 (One More Patient Per Day) the amount of additional revenue the practice would receive if each provider added one kept appointment per day throughout the year. Health Prime’s Datalytics dashboard shows this value-added feature not generally captured on your typical billing company dashboard.
If you want to be able to see one more patient per day, there is no need for any additional marketing or advertisement. Therefore, by adjusting your medical practice, you can see an extra patient per day without difficulty.
How can you see one more patient per day?
1. Make sure your front desk is managing your schedule efficiently
Is your staff filling every available slot, or are they leaving some slots vacant that they could have filled? Does your staff routinely offer the first available slot, even if it’s today or within two hours? Is your front office staff a barrier to patient access? By asking yourself these questions, you might be able to determine if your staff is scheduling and managing your patients properly.
Sometimes, the staff doesn’t want to schedule one more patient per day. Maybe it seems like too much work. The more patients they have to check in and out, the more they work. Smart people who want to design a job that works for them will find they can manipulate your schedule in many ways to make their lives easier. This practice is not in the patient’s best interest to be told they have to wait to be seen. Neither is the doctor, who can see an extra patient per day but doesn’t know their staff is turning them away.
2. Reduce your no-shows
Monitor your average No-Show Rate and set realistic goals to reduce this metric. One way you can reduce your no-shows is by doing appointment confirmations. This way, you can confirm if the patient will show up to the scheduled appointment. By reducing your number of no-shows, you will easily be able to see one more patient a day.
3. Set up appointments for preventive care
Every patient can go for a routine check-up and preventive care once a year without any medical symptoms. Insurance companies must pay for these annual check-ups for all subscribers without applying deductibles or copayments. Insurance covers 100% of the allowed amount.
Investigate how many patients have not scheduled that regular check-out in the last year. This is good for your patients because they can find something that could save their lives. It is also suitable for the providers because they will have extra revenue covered entirely by the insurance company.
4. Optimize your medical practice
Are you seeing as many patients as you could/should have? Are you too busy? If your answer to this last question is yes, you need to optimize your practice and determine the reasons behind your busyness.
Ask yourself if you are doing paperwork tasks or spending time documenting in your EHR. Also, analyze potential problems that you might have within the processes in your office and reach out to an expert if you want to implement some ideas on optimizing your medical practice.
Health Prime can help you achieve your goals!
If you want to see one more patient per day, Health Prime (HPI) offers you different solutions:
- Access to your one more patient per day metric: At HPI, we have Datalytics, the RCM platform you need to know about. Our platform focuses on insights that other medical billing solutions neglect. You will see how your practice is doing at first glance, including the +1 patient per day metric, our value-added feature not typically captured on your typical billing company dashboard.
- Monitor your No-Show rate: If you focus on reducing the number of no-shows per day, you may be able to see one extra patient per day. At HPI, we calculate your No-Show rate by dividing the number of no-show appointments by the number of expected appointments for that same period.
- Appointment confirmations: At Health Prime, we have a department that can help you call your patients and confirm whether they will show up for your appointments. Engage our department for a trial period and see how we can help you reduce the number of no-shows.
- Scheduling appointments: Calling your patients to schedule appointments may seem tedious. We can do it for you. Schedule regular appointments or appointments for preventative care. Find slots in your schedule that will allow you to have additional appointments. If you want to make the call, we can give you the list of patients you can call.
If you want more information about how to fit one more patient daily, email us at [email protected]. Our team will schedule a meeting to discuss how we can optimize your workflows by cutting costs and saving you time!
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