This blog article is the third installment of our “10 in 12” series (read the first and second), in which we are examining how hospitals can accomplish a 10% strategic reduction of operating cost over a period of 12 months using the insights gained through Harris Affinity’s Decision Support solution (ADS). Financial insights to healthcare systems are incomplete unless they include physician activity.
How well do you understand the financial aspects of providing the vast, complex and interrelated services that physicians provide in caring for patients?
Did you know?
On average, the U.S. spends about $3.6 trillion annually on healthcare services*. As illustrated by the infographic on the left, hospital care and physician services account for about half, while the cost of physician services alone accounts for more than 30% of those expenses. This means that if you are not in including physician costing with your financial reporting, you are missing insights into ONE THIRD of your business. Download our free white paper to discover the many benefits of physician costing.
Clear your field of vision
Consider this: the windshield of a car delivers the vision necessary to safely operate the vehicle. Think of the windshield as your view to financial data for both hospital and physician service activity. Now let’s put a big round sticker on the windshield that is directly in front of the driver’s field of vision. This represents a lack of vision to physician data. How safe would you feel as a passenger in this vehicle?
Physician service costing presents financial and clinical insights that are not included with typical hospital-related data, so that you can clearly see the factors that influence care-based activities. Hospital physician services costing includes:
- Documenting the physician services provided to patients
- Coding clinical activities and relating them to statistical and financial metrics
- Using these financial metrics for billing and reimbursement
A complete financial picture
When combined with hospital costing, physician service costing produces a complete financial picture of providing care in two main areas:
- Healthcare networks – This includes both hospitals and physicians. Hospital settings include large amounts of labor and supply costs that measure resources utilized to provide services. These resources are directed and provided by physicians. Hospital costing creates information about operational and clinical events. Combining physician costing with hospital costing allows insights into the activities that drive these events.
- Individual and group physician practices – With a professional component emphasis, the costing of individual and group practices provides insights into services outside of the hospital setting, giving you the ability to quickly answer questions about the cost of providing quality care through the entire patient experience.
How can you apply and implement physician service costing at your facility?
Take an inventory of your resources to assess the knowledge base, skill sets and expertise that will be needed to successfully accomplish physician costing as well as the software that will be required to best support the costing process. This is where a valued partner like Harris Affinity can help.
Our decision support system, ADS, includes all components related to physician involvement with patient care, including non-hospital based physician services that are part of the continuum of care and are usually excluded in financial reporting systems. ADS provides profitability and resource utilization reports based on physician activities to help hospital executives make decisions related to the financial aspects of managing clinical operations.
Harris Affinity’s professional services team has 125 years of combined experience working in the healthcare industry. Click the button below to get started with physician costing.
* Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
Register for our physician costing lunch & learn on Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Harris Affinity is hosting a free physician costing lunch and learn via WebEx on Wednesday, May 12, 2021 at 10-11 a.m. PDT; 1-2 p.m. EDT.
