7 ways to optimize expenditures associated with surgical procedures
Read these tips to maximize reimbursements and reduce uncompensated expenses to improve profit margins.
While difficult to measure, some estimates have found that inpatient surgical care represents up to 50% of hospital expenditures.1 Even with the rise of outpatient surgery centers and ASCs, surgical procedures significantly impact a health system’s bottom line.
As healthcare organizations seek to deliver better quality care while reducing the total cost of care, it’s essential to evaluate the processes, procedures, and protocols surrounding surgical procedures.
Here are 7 ways to optimize expenditures and reduce uncompensated expenses for surgical care:
- Enable 24/7/365 access to educational content: Patients with 24/7/365 access to information before and after a surgical procedure typically experience less anxiety and have better outcomes. Better outcomes reduce the likelihood of readmissions, which is critical to your bottom line as CMS and other payers penalize providers for those readmissions tied to surgical procedures.
- Encourage two-way communication: Creating opportunities for patients to ask questions of their care team is critical. Not understanding directions can increase same-day cancellations and no-shows, both of which are uncompensated expenses yet take valuable time and resources.
- Improve pre-op task adherence: Pre-op task adherence is critical to reducing the uncompensated expenses associated with same-day cancellations and patient no-shows on the day of a surgical procedure.
- Create checklists and daily to-dos for patients to follow: Developing standardized pre- and post-op checklists and enabling your patients to check off daily to-dos from their smartphone increases the chances your patients are ready before their procedure and are following the care plan directives.
- Make medication adherence a priority: Medication adherence needs to be a top priority as patients who fail to stop taking their medication before a surgical procedure is one of the top reasons for a same-day cancellation.
- Collect patient-reported outcomes: As more value-based care models emerge, patient-reported quality metrics will become increasingly important to maximize reimbursements. Leaving money on the table will further erode healthcare organizations’ profit margins.
- Identify at-risk patients: Knowing which patients may be at risk for complications after surgery makes it possible for the care team to intervene before there’s an issue, thus reducing the likelihood of costly readmissions.
Optimizing surgical expenditures is possible with proper management of resources
A dynamic patient engagement platform like Ayva helps providers and care teams work more efficiently to better serve their patients while significantly contributing to a reduction in the total cost of care.
As health systems and physician practices continue to operate with shrinking revenue margins, finding opportunities to maximize reimbursements by optimizing expenses and reducing uncompensated expenditures is mission critical.
Learn how Ayva can help.