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Nate Moore, CPA, MBA, FACMPE, president and chief executive officer of Moore Solutions Inc., visits with us about the data used to drive health operations. In healthcare one of the big concerns is revenue generation.
Driving Force
There are numerous strategies around how to maximize this income and ensure to profitability or sustainability of this practice. Moore contributed to this complex situation by taking some steps back and insisting we analyze the data in front of us. He said that by doing so, there is the potential of uncovering obstacles that can be easily removed and increase efficiencies.
How to Look at the Data
Moore said how you look at the data isn’t the most important concept when evaluating this information. If you can look at it with great dashboards and analytics, that is excellent. But if you need to work through the data in something such as a pivot table, that works just as well too. He has recently been advocating for the increased use of pivot tables due to the functionality. If you can organize all the information into groups and single out what is being investigated, that’s all you really need.
The second significant piece to looking at your data is customization, customization, customization. Just because one practice is able to look at one aspect of their data and increase their functionality, does not mean that your practice is experiencing the same difficulties and will be able to resolve based on the same reporting. Each operation, situation, or provider is different and you must look at information that is pertinent or specific to that scenario and use those evaluations to obtain the goals set out.
What This Shows Us
Moore said a common perspective of healthcare operations administration is to increase the productivity of the physicians in order to generate more revenue. While he does not always disagree with this, there are often other things at play than the physician’s actual productivity. It’s not that physicians need to work harder, we need to understand what is happening to result in the current levels of productivity and how we can fix it. For example, if a provider is limited by space, resources, or time, data could bring these factors to light rather than assuming the provider could be doing more. By looking through the information at hand it may be determined that the provider has reached their threshold with the resources available and need additional external inputs before they can actually increase operations.
How it’s Relatable
Let's say you are trying to engage providers in your practice and get them to understand what is necessary for the clinic to sustain their operations. Moore challenged with the question, “If you had one page to present to your physician’s monthly, what would you include in this report?” By understanding what your providers value as a driving force, you may be able to simply show them how they are tracking and inspire them to maintain productivity without much input. If it’s compensation incentives, then include that in the report. If it is patient satisfaction, then show them how they compare to other individuals. Again, this brings us back to the customization perspective which is very important to keep in consideration. Ensuring the data is coming from a legitimate source and understanding how it is to be applied will prove the effectiveness of this strategy. Once we can approach our difficulties with the appropriate arsenal of information, we should begin to see a shift in healthcare operations.
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