Practice Health Check

RWS provides Practice Health Checks for established practices.   

What is a Practice Health Check? 

A Practice Health Check is a comprehensive assessment of your practice. Our team are able to evaluate the overall performance of your business.

As a doctor, it is essential to take the time to ensure your practice is on the right track.  

Why is a Practice Health Check important?  

A Practice Health Check is important to identify key areas for improvement. When you are aware of the inefficiencies that may exist, you are empowered to make informed decisions to close any gaps.  

The goals of a Practice Health Check are to identify strengths and weaknesses existing in your system areas.  

  1. Billing & financial systems – In a nutshell, we ensure your staff are billing correctly and are efficient at handling debtors and health funds, so you get paid. 
  2. Administrative processes – Here we look for ways to improve the systems in which you run your business offering user-friendly solutions where required. 
  3. Human resource compliance – this Health Check involves analysing your FairWork compliance in relation to documentation and staffing processes. 

Practice Health Check benefits:

  • Shortfalls are identified 
  • Compliance is achieved 
  • Efficiency is improved 
  • Increased profitability 
  • Enhanced patient care 
  • Better risk management 
  • Satisfied staff  

How does the process work? 

As discussed, there are three types of health checks RWS offer: 

  1. Practice Health Check – Billing & financial systems:  

This Practice Health Check is recommended for practices that have been operational for 3+ years and is conducted by our accounting team led by Peter Chaplin (CPA accountant). The team will require a login to your Medical Software, and the audit is conducted with particular attention paid to your debtors report and practice software.  

As a guide, typically billing audits take 3-5 hours and the team will contact you to go through the findings. From there you can decide if you would like us to rectify any errors in your system and implement improvements to your processes.  

  1. Practice Health Check – Administrative processes: 

Sometimes our doctors commence private practice before knowing RWS. In this case, they may have copied the processes and templates their colleagues used to get started. However, this inevitably leads to inefficiencies. A Practice Health Check of your processes can identify what is working well and what is not, with our team suggesting better ways to action tasks. 

Typically, this is conducted after the financial audit as problems that are identified with billing and debtors are process-related in most cases. 

  1. Practice Health Check – Human resource compliance: 

If you employ staff, it is a legal requirement to meet your FairWork obligations, most practices require assistance in this area as doctors are not trained regarding these obligations and are unaware of the relevant award requirements. To close this gap, this Practice Health Check reviews your current documentation and identifies any missing requirements.  

Our HR team make contact with you or your key staff to conduct the health check, this typically takes 1-2 hours. We present you with the findings from the Practice Health Check and from there you can determine what assistance you would like.  

How do I get started? 

Contact the RWS team.

They will meet with you to discuss your needs and explain the health check process in more detail. From there you will be able to decide what you require.

Health Check Findings

 

Here are some recent findings resulting from Practice Health Checks.

For confidentiality, we have not listed the specialty area or state.  

Case Study One 

The surgeon was concerned about a recent decrease in revenue. The RWS Practice Health Check revealed the following: 

  1. The doctor offered two new procedures in which the claims had been repeatedly rejected by the health funds, staff were busy and unsure of how to rectify this, so for a period of five years the doctor had never been paid for these procedures. 
  1. Referrals were not current in many cases resulting in operative fees not being paid by Medicare and the health funds 

Case Study Two 

The surgeon’s debts were increasing due to the introduction of Telehealth appointments. The RWS Practice Health Check revealed the following: 

  1. The practice had not introduced a telehealth procedure for collecting payments 
  1. The staff were calling patients after their appointment to collect payment 
  1. The staff were not collecting payments in a timely manner 

RWS introduced a fee policy and changed the practice procedures for taking telehealth payments.  

Case Study Three 

A physician’s practice contacted RWS concerned about their cash flow. 

The RWS Practice Health Check revealed the following: 

  1. Staff were not prioritizing the collection of Gap Fees / Surgery Fees prior to surgery. 
  1. Staff were not active in chasing patients for Surgery when Health Funds did not accept the surgery invoice due to issues with the patients level of cover. 
  1. Health Fund agreements had not been updated to add in new provider locations 

 With changes to task priorities, and processes revenues increased $600,000 in the next financial year.  

Case Study Four 

An established and busy physician practice approached RWS for assistance with patient flow and administrative efficiencies. After conducting a Practice Health Check we found the following: 

  1. Patient files were being created upon receipt of the referral but there was no system of checking that patients had been called to make an appointment, resulting in lost patients and complaints  
  1. Referrals were getting triaged by one person which was far too much work for this staff member resulting in patients going back to their GP and asking for a new referral 
  1. Referrals were getting lost in the congested admin inbox 

Our team found the referral triaging process a significant bottleneck for the practice resulting in lost patients. The triaging process was then distributed, and a system implemented so that once triaged, patients would be called for their appointments. 

Case Study Five 

An established surgical practice contacted us to performance manage a staff member. A HR health check uncovered the following: 

  1. Staff had made unapproved purchases of professional development (training courses) 
  1. Staff had been buying supplies that were not required to the practice using unmonitored petty cash 
  1. Fraud was detected where a staff member was reversing receipts 
  1. Time theft was detected where timesheets were being completed incorrectly