How to remain financially viable in General Practice in 2017

By Peter Demaio

The challenge for the health care system in 2017 is to continue to provide quality, accessible and affordable health care and still remain financially viable.
With the continuing rebate freeze, we are considering how general practices can maintain accessible health care and remain sustainable even when faced with increasing costs.

The problem

It is incredibly important that clinics safeguard their longevity and financial sustainability in the face of the rebate freeze and really only have 3 key ways to do this. Two of these options will lead to a lower quality of care for patients.
Clinics can
1. Diminish care
2. Increase consultation costs (decreasing accessibility)
3. Decrease administrative costs

The first option is unacceptable to any doctor that cares for their patients.
If doctors introduce a high ‘gap’ fee to supplement the frozen rebate, it will have a serious implications for patient accessibility.
Practices would have to increase administrative costs, obstructive debt and all with a minimum of $15 per consultation which fails to retain any additional income for the practice. Most importantly, this amount would significantly impact on the majority of patients seeking health care, especially those who are most disadvantaged within our community.

The only solution

The only answer which will not compromise patient care and accessibility is to decrease administrative costs. One way which will actually increase the quality of the patient experience is through the introduction of automation in the administrative process. As automated services have become standardised across many other highly competitive sectors such as aviation, household retail, there is now widespread acceptance in the community.

It’s time that automation benefit the Australian medical sector also, which is why AutoMed products have been was developed and patented by and for, Melbourne GPs.

Patients can book appointments online and check-in on the system once they arrive at the clinic of their choice. The check-in process includes confirming a patient’s address, contact details, outstanding accounts, availability of the doctor, and providing feedback on wait times and room number.

Once the patient is seen by the GP there is no need to wait for a receptionist to finalise their appointment or book in a follow up session. Each patient can return to the kiosk and process any payments and Medicare rebates with the required eftpos facilities.

All processes are completed by issuing a receipt for each payment and a card for every confirmed future appointment.

This is all achievable without having to visit the reception desk.

The results

The AutoMed solution has now been tested with over 200,000 patient visits being processed.

With these decreased administration costs, practices using AutoMed Systems have only had to introduce a $3 to $5 gap fee at the most to cover the loss of income from the rebate freeze rather than $15-$20 required to cover the additional staffing costs, doctors wages, decrease in patients number and increase in bad debts.

This lower gap fee would have a far smaller impact on patient accessibility whilst still affording the practice a significantly higher rise in income afford by any of Medicare’s patient fee changes.

Automed has proved to improve staff efficiency with a reduction of costs by 25%, improve staff morale and retention while allowing for growth in patient numbers by up to 27%.

This technology exists and is ready to be installed today.