In an article published in Medical Economics, Brad J. Scoggins, FO, DAAP contends that it’s not enough for medical practices to counter adverse market forces by cutting costs and streamlining operations. He argues that practices must take steps to generate more revenue—specifically by offering embedded services from an established specialist provider.
The primary care practice crisis: It’s time to play offense. That’s the title of a timely article written by Brad J. Scoggins, FO, DAAP. His thesis: “When primary care practices are being strangled by market forces beyond their control, the fastest way to counter those forces is to quickly generate more revenue.“
Scoggins is one of United Allergy Services’ newest allergy partners, and he uses that experience as the proof of his argument that the fastest way to ramp up revenue is by “. . . offering embedded clinical services from an established specialist partner . . . that can be integrated into the practice’s clinical, operational and financial workflows.”
“It is hard to miss the headlines about the unprecedented challenges threatening family and internal medicine across the primary care spectrum,” Scoggins writes. “This traditional and essential gateway to health care in the United States is buckling due to:
- Crushing administrative burdens from payers
- Accelerating costs exacerbated by inflationary pressures
- Anemic reimbursement rates that don’t keep pace with the first two threats
- Corporate competitors like Amazon and CVS blurring the primary care sector for patients
Scoggins acknowledges that “playing defense” against such threats is essential and that most practices are doing everything they can to streamline workflows, leverage technology, manage costs, and negotiate the best possible contracts with payers.
However, these defensive tactics don’t address one of the biggest issues facing providers: patient leakage. According to Scoggins, “It is common for primary care practices to refer patients out for services that they don’t offer, along with the revenue those treatments represent. Patient leakage due to referrals . . . is a key cause of stress on independent and large group primary practices alike.”
The solution, he says, is to recapture those referrals. “Assuming a practice is effectively delivering all the routine core primary care treatments and services, it is time to expand into ancillary medical services and the additional revenues and other benefits they represent.”
As mentioned, Scoggins focuses on allergy testing and treatment “. . . as an opportunity for primary care practices to diversify services, meet growing patient demand, keep patients within the practice, and generate substantial new revenue.”
As Scoggins notes, “Primary practices that are offering ancillary allergy services to their patients are not only capturing a larger share of patient health care spend and alleviating reimbursement pressures, but on average a practice could consistently generate an additional $150,000 to $250,000 yearly (based on practice size and payer mix). Oftentimes, that revenue range is equivalent to what an additional physician could produce for the medical practice, but with a much smaller footprint and administrative cost.”
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