Don’t forget the small things when scrutinizing physician practice overhead

The physician practice manager’s effort to control operating overhead never ends. It’s not easy to hold overhead in line year to year - But monitoring a few aspects of practice operations and making changes to them can bolster the effort.

To assess overhead, first complete a financial analysis that compares it as a percentage of collections. Next, compare it to prior-year statements (total expenditures and per area expenditures) and benchmarks.  Once a comparison is complete, look for areas that can be reduced. Following are tips to reduce your overhead in specific areas.

Supplies

Here are several moves to reduce overhead in regard to supplies. First, centralize purchasing. If one office runs out of supplies, a designated employee should first call the other office to secure additional supplies. Under no circumstances should an office be allowed to order more supplies.

Scrutinize exclusive relationships with vendors because they often do not offer competitive prices. Develop a list of needed supplies and costs, then request bids from various vendors. Use Internet vendors, too.

Use an existing individual practice association (IPA) or managaement services organization (MSO) to create group purchasing power and leverage. Aside from supplies, these entities often group purchase malpractice insurance, and other operating costs.

Lease agreements

Verify that the operating stop provision of the lease contains charges related only to building operations. In typical leases, landlords allocates to tenants excess costs associated with operating a building. Sometimes operating stop provisions contain unrelated costs such as payroll and management fees. Inspect the provision every year.

Also, sometimes landlords require tenants to purchase insurance. Check if the insurance is necessary, and whether inexpensive alternatives exist.

Other costs

Numerous and often small costs can add up. They must be evaluated regularly. They include

Small fees – i.e., bank charges and penalties. No practice should incur these. Review statements to ensure this.

Advertising – compare the benefits of advertising with its costs, particularly telephone directory advertising. Practices that have half- or full-page ads might consider reducing or eliminating them.

Outside billing – determine a potential collection rate, minus expenses, for internal billing and compare it with the same figures for the external billing agency.

Postage costs – are they practice’s postage costs or employees’ personal postage costs? Develop a system to determine and track postage cots.

Telephone costs – monitor long-distance calling to make sure they are business-related and ensure that the practice is not paying for lines and services it doesn’t use.

Professional fees – fees for various services, such as accounting, often can be reduced by seeking service providers that offer lower fees.

Ancillary costs – can work related to these services be handled internally for less money?