In today’s competitive and rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, outsourcing back-office operations has become a game-changing strategy for healthcare practices. It’s a tried-and-true way for improved performance in a cost-effective manner while allowing providers to focus more of their time and resources on patient care.
Outsourcing can cover various business operations, from routine administrative tasks and human resources to specialized support services like IT, finance, and accounting solutions. By partnering with experts in these areas, your healthcare practice can gain the support it needs to thrive and achieve long-term success.
We’ll explore how outsourcing your office functions can be a powerful tool to enhance your practice’s efficiency, boost revenue, and give your providers more time to focus on what they do best — caring for patients.
Back-Office Operations You Can Outsource
Below are some key areas where outsourcing can be particularly advantageous:
Finance and Accounting
Relying on certified public accountants who have a proven track record advising healthcare clients can maximize your practice’s financial potential. Look for an outsourcing group that offers a range of accounting and financial services and a deep bench of seasoned advisors with substantial experience working with practices like yours. A good choice is a firm or advisors that enable you to customize their services and solutions to the specific areas of your practice you actually need — and at the level of service you want. Among the many outsource services or roles your practice could benefit from:
- A fractional CFO to improve, analyze, and leverage your financial and operational data, develop forecasts, and drive profitability.
- A back-office team to manage accounts payable and receivable, tax compliance financial reporting, and more.
- Back-office support to offload specific tasks or take on projects your current team doesn’t have the bandwidth to design, execute, and/or monitor progress and complete.
Technology: IT and Cybersecurity
Using outdated technology just doesn’t cut it in today’s professional world. From cyber threats posed to healthcare practices to foregone revenue stemming from obsolete technology usage, it’s critical to take advantage of these tools and the personnel who know how to leverage them.
Outsourcing your practice’s technology can help you better protect patient data, better ensure HIPAA compliance, streamline operations, and ultimately, provide your patients with a higher quality of care.
Human Resources
There are few things more complex and time-consuming in a healthcare practice than its HR operations. Including everything from recruiting and retaining staff, managing employee benefits, determining compensation, compliance with regulations, and more, there’s a lot that HR is responsible for.
Outsourcing your human resource operations allows your practice to benefit from expert advice, streamlined processes, and reduced administrative burden. This leads to improved employee satisfaction, higher retention rates, and more time for your team to focus on patient care.
Outsourcing some or all of these back-office operations allows you to leverage the advice and services of experts in their given fields. This frees up more of your time to run your practice and provide better care for your patients.
Benefits of Outsourcing These Operations
By reassigning these tasks to specialized professionals through outsourcing firms, you gain several vital benefits that directly impact your bottom line and overall practice performance. Here’s how outsourcing can work in your favor:
Improved Patient Care
When you and your staff are free from back-office work, you can dedicate more time to what truly matters — your patients. By outsourcing work related to accounting, human resources, technology, or administrative tasks such as customer service and data entry, your practice can maintain a more personalized approach to patient care.
This improves customer satisfaction as patients receive more attentive care. A well-managed practice, free from back-office distractions, can foster stronger patient relationships, leading to higher retention rates and positive word-of-mouth referrals.
Cost Savings
One of the most compelling reasons to outsource your back-office operations is the potential for cost savings. Contrary to popular belief, outsourcing work to specialists in multiple disciplines is often less expensive than hiring full-time employees.
Rather than relying on less experienced hires because that’s all you can afford (or paying premium salaries to hire the highly skilled and experienced candidates you want), outsourcing to a firm allows you to leverage that firm’s highly qualified and experienced individuals only for the specific tasks, projects, and/or services — and associated hours per week or month — that you need.
Optimized Operations
Efficiency is key in any medical practice; outsourcing your back-office operations can help achieve this. When your staff no longer spends valuable time on administrative tasks, they can concentrate on their core responsibilities.
This leads to more efficient operations, allowing your practice to handle more patients without compromising care quality. The result is a more productive team and more smoothly run practice, where each member can focus on their strengths, ultimately leading to better patient outcomes.
Maximized Revenue
By outsourcing, you can significantly increase revenue by optimizing every possible source of income. This can result in substantial financial benefits, amounting to additional thousands — or even tens of thousands of dollars for your practice.
These incremental improvements add up, ensuring that your practice is running smoothly and maximizing its financial potential.
Finding the Right Outsourcing Partner for Your Healthcare Practice
Having spent years delivering results for healthcare practices large and small, we highly recommend seeking out a firm with expertise in various business operations. You’ll be able to leverage the know-how of many and enjoy the benefit of a solution (or set of solutions) tailored to your specific needs.
Whether you know exactly what your back-office needs or are concerned that your current operations aren’t running efficiently, a third-party firm can help. Relying on their expertise, you can objectively assess the state of your back office, identify any issues, and create tailored solutions that fit your needs. They’ll also help design a plan and stay accountable every step of the way.
Rehmann’s healthcare team can help your practice in numerous ways. From improving the practice you work to grow daily to building your financial legacy, we are ready to help you achieve economic stability and support your passion for delivering patient care.
To learn how Rehmann can help you and your healthcare practice succeed, contact us at [email protected] for more information.
