Administrative duties are typically viewed as a tedious and necessary bi-product of opening your own practice. No one opens a clinic with the excited anticipation of doing their own bookkeeping or writing company policies based on the latest labor laws that just went in to effect. (Well, perhaps someone does, but I think it is safe to say they are rare.) Usually, administrative work winds up sliding into evenings and weekends or being pushed onto a non-provider to handle.
There is an alternative, however: Outsourcing. For the sake of clarity, when we talk about outsourcing in this context, we simply mean hiring an expert outside of your organization to handle administrative duties for your business.
So, why should practice owners consider outsourcing their admin work?
You only pay for the admin you need. Do practices need HR help? YES. Do they need a full time HR professional on staff? Probably not. Outsourcing enables you to pay for only the amount of support you need, and only when you need it.
Experts are able to find efficiencies that can save you money. When someone is completing a task that isn’t in their normal course of work, they often make it more cumbersome than necessary or add steps that a practiced professional would eliminate. A streamlined process that reduces steps is often achieved when admin work is turned over to an outsourced professional.
Get the expertise and experience you couldn’t otherwise afford. Most practices are not in a financial position to hire a full-time, degreed CFO to handle their accounting. When you outsource to a professional, you pay a fraction of what you would in hiring full-time and still gain access to their expertise.
Outsourcing saves you on hiring costs. When you outsource, you also reduce the costs associated with hiring an employee. Payroll taxes and benefits alone typically add 30% over the cost of a salary. Time and money spent on recruiting or turnover are eliminated. Time required for a training and onboarding is significantly reduced, and your liability as an employer is significantly limited when utilizing an outsourced firm.
Expert Business Partners can expose and eliminate liabilities AND may have already solved your problem. It’s easy to blind yourself to liabilities in your own practice, especially when you’re not spending time scrutinizing every detail of your business. An outsourced Business Partner can examine your operation for weak points and propose solutions. Some of the most value in hiring an outsourced professional is that they are probably working for other businesses like yours. That means they may have already overcome some of your biggest challenges and can more quickly resolve the issue for your practice. In many cases, they may solve the problem before you even know it’s there.
Outsourcing gives you time to focus on what you and your staff do best. Eliminating the time spent on administrative tasks gives you and your staff more time to do what you love – patient care. You may even get some personal time back on evenings and weekends. Isn’t that why you opened your own practice in the first place?
