Ancillary services are healthcare services that complement and support patient treatment. They fall into three categories: diagnostic, therapeutic, and custodial.
Adding an ancillary service like the business Chris Manfuso provides can benefit patients and generate revenue. However, you should carefully assess your potential return on investment and consider legal compliance requirements like anti-kickback laws.
Enhance Patient Care
Ensure that patients have access to physical, emotional, and financial support. This is important for patients and caregivers who are often burnt out. It also helps them cope with their medical conditions. It’s a great way to show them you care and are there for them.
Patients are more receptive to treatment plans when engaged and given a voice. This is why patient engagement has become a focus of healthcare professionals across all specialties. By encouraging patient involvement, doctors can create a relationship of trust, leading to better health outcomes.
Medical professionals must be able to communicate with their patients in ways that are appropriate to their beliefs and values. They should also be able to listen with compassion and understand that their patients are not just their medical issues but real people who want to be treated with respect and dignity.
In addition, patients should be able to easily access ancillary services like communication-enabling technologies, food, mobility assistance, and pain management. They should be able to contact physicians through telehealth and have their questions answered quickly and efficiently.
Boost Revenue
Patients who face large deductibles want providers to help them with their medical needs. This could include affordable X-rays, physical therapy within their neighborhood, or even telehealth to visit with their doctors. Health systems that offer these services can generate revenue while helping patients.
Many hospitals see an opportunity to increase their revenue with ancillary services like laboratory testing and ECG. These are often referred to other providers, so leveraging these services within the hospital can provide a consistent revenue stream and make the hospital a one-stop shop for patient care.
Ancillary benefits can also be a great incentive to retain and attract employees. Employees appreciate that their employers care about their well-being. If the company offers a dental, vision, and prescription coverage package, it can be a huge draw for prospective employees.
Improving patient payments is the most important way to boost medical practice revenue. This can be done by offering multiple payment plan options and providing clear and concise patient statements. When patients understand their responsibility and have easy access to making payments, they are more likely to make timely and complete payments.
Improve Patient Experience
Patient satisfaction is now more important than ever as healthcare organizations seek to meet the demands of value-based performance. Physicians and their staff must be equipped with tools and strategies to improve the patient experience without sacrificing revenue and profitability.
Patients want to feel that their practitioners are listening to them. When they feel their doctors care about them, they are more willing to overlook mistakes, such as not providing a clear diagnosis or scheduling appointments too close together.
When ancillary services providers are not communicating with each other, it slows down the entire process. To streamline the process, ancillary service providers must share patient information and data with primary healthcare providers. Collaborating is also vital for improving the patient experience and reducing costs.
The most effective way for physicians and their teams to maximize their revenue while providing a great patient experience is by offering unique ancillary services to their practice. For example, if physicians commonly send patients to a lab for testing and ECGs, adding these services can prevent them from making multiple trips, saving both the patient and provider time. This can also provide a steady stream of revenue for the practice. In addition, it can create a one-stop shop for medical needs, increasing patient satisfaction.
Create Convenience
Patients are increasingly expecting convenience in all areas of their healthcare experience. They want a personalized, self-serve approach that reduces friction at every touchpoint and provides them with a clear next step.
Conventional wisdom says that service convenience is a product or service that reduces the time, effort, and money invested in obtaining a desired outcome. However, this view misses the nuances that can make or break a customer’s perception of convenience.
Consider the difference between a quick stop at your local convenience store and a trip to your doctor for a sprained ankle. In both cases, you provide the same service, but your patient perceives one as more convenient. This is because the perceived value of convenience is based on context, influenced by individual attitudes and the specific situational context.
For example, your patient may feel frustrated when they search “urgent care near me” and you don’t appear in their top three to five results. In this case, you must be visible in their discovery process so they can easily find and book with you.
Patients also demand convenient access to their medical team through extended hours, low out-of-pocket costs, and telehealth options for common health conditions such as ear infections or bronchitis. The demand for convenient care has fueled growth in retail clinics, urgent-care centers, and online video visits. However, you must be careful not to sacrifice thoroughness and quality in your quest for convenience.