Rising operational costs, short payments by medical aids, chronic bad debt – it all feeds through to the bottom line and affects the financial health of your practice. The bottom line is your net income, and is simply the difference between your revenue and your costs. So if you want to boost your bottom line, here are ways you can increase your revenue:

Schedule more visits

Some days tend to be slower than others; use them for repeat visits and for patients who are likely to require a longer consultation. Conversely, on busy days, try to shorten your consultation times and fit in more patients. The trick is to avoid the slackness of a too-empty schedule and the stress (for both doctor and patient) of a too-full schedule.

Submit claims in real time

Submit your claims in real time, while the patient is still at the practice. You’ll know immediately from the claim response how much the medical aid will pay. That means you can collect before the patient leaves the practice. This has three immediate benefits:

• improved cash flow (the money gets into your bank account faster)
• reduced bad debt (fewer patients owe you money)
• less admin (no need to chase up unpaid bills)

Reduce claim rejections

Claim rejections happen because of incorrect patient information, and that’s always the result of human error, either on the part of the patient or your staff. Either way, this can be fixed through attention to detail and checking patient benefits before the consultation.

Reduce bad debt

If you’re running your practice efficiently, your bad debt shouldn’t be more than 3% of revenue. Anything higher, and your bottom line will start to suffer.