Musings from the Floor of Medtrade Fall 2016

November 11, 2016

Category: General

We had a great time at Medtrade Fall 2016. A week after getting home, we reflect on some takeaways from the show floor. 

• Providers are becoming more aware of the "small" inefficiencies that add up. For example, printing electronic documents for review by an approver, just to scan them back to the system later. For them, we demonstrated how business process management like CommandCenter can help you tremendously to gather documents, assign for review, automate hand-ffs, track the process and - in the case of an audit - send directly through esMD. 
• Faxing continues to be a huge area of opaqueness and inefficiency. We were honestly surprised at how many providers still use physical fax machines, given the overhead costs and lost productivity walking all over the office. But even for those who use e-faxing, many don't even what they are paying for faxing or whether that is a good deal or not. Also, many providers feel confident in their ability to handling incoming faxes, but outgoing remains a problem. To these attendees, we demo'd Medforce's Fax Management App and put together low-rate proposals for Fax Service. 
• Write-offs are another area of inefficiency for several reasons. In some cases, the cost of handling write offs only compounds the impact. In other cases, there was concern that write-offs were being hidden and not properly addressed. In both cases, CommandCenter can help you set appropriate checks and balances for your AR collections and ensure you collect the maximum amount for minimal cost. 
• Streamlining referrals is an area we heard several providers focused on. Building a referral portal using web forms and/or using the Medforce Referral Management App can help you regain control of this important revenue stream. 
• Spending money to save money. It can be difficult to consider spending money on technology in the face of greater reimbursement cuts, and providers want assurances of both short- and long-term ROI. We were happy to sit with folks in our booth and walk through the equation of what the time and cost calculations return in value over time. We'd be happy to do that with you over the phone as well. 
• Getting staff to change. Change is hard, but, especially in what seems like an increasingly bleak industry landscape, it is the only way to survive. We talked with many providers about how to take the software and ideas they learned about back to their staff and gain their buy in. We have written several blog posts about this and also invite you all to attend our upcoming webinar on improving employee management. 

It was an excellent show. We signed 3 contracts right on the show floor! And we look forward to continuing conversations with our new contacts. If any of the above topics resonate with you, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we'd love to talk. 

 

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