The 12-step way to reduce practice expenses: part 1, staffing efficiencies.

With the overhead of the typical family medicine practice at around 60 percent of revenues, working to control practice expenses has to be a high priority for family physicians. Of course, overhead is a product not just of expenses but also of productivity. It can be reduced by increasing productivity/revenue, reducing expenses or both. This article will focus on reducing expenses. To modernize the old saying a bit, a dollar saved in practice expenses is a dollar earned, while a dollar earned by seeing more patients is less than a dollar earned since some of it is eaten up by practice expenses. While you may think your practice is so lean that you couldn’t possibly cut another dollar out of your expenses, chances are it’s not. Chances are you have several opportunities to capture money that is currently being wasted. If you can stop that waste, you’ll have more money for physician salaries or for reinvesting in the practice, and you’ll be able to practice more cost-effectively. Working to reduce overhead can seem daunting, in part because it’s hard to know where to begin. That’s where this article and the one in the next issue of FPM can help. We’ll break down your practice expenses into sections you can tackle individually, one a month, starting with the ones most likely to repay your effort.