Nontraditional medicine

Historically, health care delivery was a vast landscape of medical practice options. Practitioners offered general medicine, urgent or emergency care medicine as well as specialty services. Patients moved within the continuum of care based on need and physician referrals among practices.

The continued downsizing and squeezing of reimbursement coupled with the dynamic focus on preventive medicine initiatives have changed the landscape. What was once the “typical” medical practice—group practices and those of the single practicing physician—are now in the folds of larger health care consortiums. These initiatives serve to streamline processes, reduce administrative cost burdens and empower organizations to seek higher levels of efficiency.
 

Changing with the times

The changing health care environment requires ever-changing sales strategies. Typical models for physician practices now include centralized human resources, finance and material services/purchasing departments. An integrated electronic medical record (EMR) system is the new norm of medical record management. Subsequently, identifying the primary decision-makers within this centralized department is a key to maintaining and/or gaining business within these very structured departments.

Managers have the oversight of vast departments with expanded budgets. Each are challenged with the goal of further reductions in overall spending patterns. While the client cost savings strategy is not a new concept for those in sales, the need to identify emerging trends within an organization may be a challenge.

Not only are the typical department “types” of records evolving, but the method in which the department manages those records also has become a dynamic process. While human resources, finance and material services/purchasing departments may be managing via “born digital” systems, most are not “completely paperless.” For example, the human resource department staff manages employee applications, staff education tracking reports, performance reviews, quality assurance audits as well as terminated/retired employee records. These may exist in various formats—paper or digital. These departments have workflow process needs, and they serve as the vehicles to obtain additional services, such as cloud storage, workflow processing, document imaging and destruction. For instance, departments scanning historical documents into an electronic system often maintain those records in paper for an additional time.
 

Determining needs

It is crucial to determine the primary decision-maker within an organization when discussing the digital/software segment of the business. Content management decisions may be driven by the department manager and often are relegated to oversight by an IT technical team member.

Despite new and emerging EMR and digital diagnostic imaging systems, sales associates are encouraged to explore how these components integrate into clients’ disaster and contingency plans.

Software vendors in health care offer online cloud storage as part of their vendor package. Health information managers or IT managers involved with these solutions often indicate that their vendor provides “free” cloud storage. However, history proves that very few things in health care —as in life—are free. More likely one of two scenarios are in play:

• Scenario No. 1 – The cloud provided by the vendor is free as long as the client is using the software and up to date with maintenance agreements/fees.
• Scenario No. 2 – If the software company is sold to another entity, the new entity may not honor the “no additional cost” portion of the contract.

While asking probing questions may be commonplace in the sales process, developing specific questions will lead to improved client needs assessments. For example, determining how the vendor provides documentation of backup may initiate a conversation and result in the client considering a secondary storage solution. The solution may be in the form of a local backup storage device.

Explore the practices currently in place and identify solutions you might provide in the realm of off-site management and backup server co-location and have discussions regarding certified media and hard drive destruction. Being knowledgeable about a client’s or prospect’s industry trends and needs empowers you to become an invaluable consultative resource and sets you apart from the traditional high-pressure salesperson.
 

Looking beyond the office

In the event a medical practice and/or large complex of medical practitioners has a clinical lab, the lab might have records management needs. Sales associates should explore the need for off-site management of paraffin wax slides and of glass slides. These two service areas can be managed easily by the records center in a temperature-controlled environment when boxed appropriately. Often large medical facilities have minimal space for the long-term storage of these types of patient records.

Sales associates typically focus on the health information management or medical records department. Sales team members often can be heard saying, “Well, everyone is already on an EMR.” However, that is far from the truth; while electronic health records have been mandated, many practices begin on a very small scale.

Additionally, if a physician group and/or practice conducts clinical research and industry drug trials, for example, their RIM (records and information management) needs and retention schedules may be unique to the specific industry study and may present another opportunity for a RIM services company’s salesperson to explore service solutions.

Given the opportunity, a client’s or prospect’s team members will discuss the challenges they face related to the electronic health records management trend. Work with them to identify the practice’s current pains. Issues may range from staff reductions resulting from combining practices and from department consolidation and the inability to manage the back-file document conversion of records into the current EMR system while mastering the new EMR system.

The consolidation of medical practices has led to increased patient/clinic visits in specific areas of a practice because of the reallocation of physicians and growing use of physician assistants (PAs). While streamlining the processes and cutting overhead at the corporate level, the increased daily volume of patient processing, record keeping, tracking and quality controls often burdens staff at the patient management and office management levels.

A medical office that is closing will need to maintain all of its records for the duration of the retention period. State specific guidelines are available to ensure a specific practice meets compliance standards. This is an excellent opportunity for consultative sales and could lead to the sale of services such as release of information for patient chart requests and long-term storage of all records with retention period management and destruction.

Traditional medical offices are virtually nonexistent. In the past five years, a drastic shift from private enterprise in the physician practice model to consolidated corporate models has occurred. Reimbursement reductions for services provided have further tightened the independent physician’s ability to practice medicine. Medical malpractice claims are exploding, and so is the need for expanding medical malpractice insurance requirements.

Mandatory systems “overhauls” are driving physicians to make a major “business” decision: The new medical business model for physicians entering today’s health care job market is to become a part of a larger medical practice consortium rather than spend resources sorting out an individual practice.

Few vertical markets in the RIM industry have experienced as many drastic changes as the health care industry. Business opportunities continue to exist in the physician medical practice arena—just in different and challenging forms.

Gail W. Bisbee is president and CEO of Confidential Records Management Inc., based in New Bern, North Carolina. She can be contacted at gbisbee@cmi-online.com.