The Financial Rewards of Outsourced Medical Staffing

We get it, outsourcing has been a taboo topic for the past 20 years.  To some doctors and office managers, it's downright Un-American. This Blog showcases the financial savings of outsourcing tasks normally assigned to a new medical assistant and/or medical transcriptionist to an outsourced company, like DrCatalyst. Outsourcing is not a replacement model. In its purest form, virtual staffing is an extension of your practice where you assign duties and tasks that you no longer wish to have your onsite perform so they can focus on revenue producing and patient outcome improvement activities.

Research Methods

All salaries were taken from Indeed.com, ziprecruiter.com, salary.com, and then cross-referenced against one another to find the average salary per position per state. You can download our free State salary analysis report, by clicking the link at the end of this blog. Be aware these statistics were compiled between December 1, 2020 through January 31, 2021, and may be subject to change. 

PART 1: MEDICAL ASSISTANTS

Not knowing the difference between Salary and Benefits

Most employees know very little about your true cost to supply them with full benefits. They ask you for hourly wage increases but do not realize that when benefits like paid time off, sick days, and health insurance coverage are added, it totals to 25-30% of their annual salary. An annual salary of $50,000 per year is actually costing your clinic between $60,000 to $70,000 per year. 

Let’s go over an example…

Your medical assistant, Alice, comes to you and requests a $2 per hour raise or she’ll leave you in two weeks for a hospital position. Alice thinks she’s asking to go from $18 to $20 per hour, or $37,440 annually to $46,800. In reality, the hidden cost of benefits has her position price tag at $46,800 annually right now and she’s actually asking for $50,960 per year. Alice had no idea she was asking her employer for more than $50,000 per year.

When you outsource, you have no federal, state, or local payroll taxes. You are not paying for paid time off, sick days, or benefits. In fact, you are only charged a simple hourly rate for services rendered. Yes, you will still pay 150% of the hourly wage for overtime, but let’s all just agree that’s likely a law in almost any state or country in the world. Lastly, the annual increases most outsourcing companies ask for are a 2-5% annual hourly increase to match that of inflation, which is -1% to 3.5% year over year (YoY). 

Medical Assistant Payroll Costs

In twenty eight states in America, a Medical Assistant with full benefits packages will cost your practice $35,000 or more a year. Even in the lowest paying states like North Carolina and Missouri, your practice will still pay $28,750 or more a year for a Medical Assistant. In states like New Jersey, Indiana, Hawaii, Arizona, Montana, Massachusetts, and Wyoming, your cost can run from $37,000 to $42,000 for an entry-level medical assistant. 

Now, compare that annual cost to outsourcing where you only pay $9-$12 per hour, or $18,720 to $24,960 per year. That’s annual savings of $10,030 or more per remote medical assistant. This is not including the fact that a great outsourcing staffing company like DrCatalyst, will supply you with FREE trained back-ups reducing your financial and productivity losses by ensuring 99% attendance ratings. 

Training Costs:

Annual training costs for onsite personnel in healthcare is at minimum $1,000 per year with the hours spent with EHR, HIPAA, Sexual Harassment, and more. Remote Staffing agencies provide all of this training FREE. So if you have a staff of five (5) medical assistants and you’re looking to hire two (2) more, then you can save an additional $7,000 in annual certifications and training. 

Physical Space and Supplies:

Every medical assistant in a practice will require a computer ($400 or more), a desk ($75-$200), chair ($25-$100), available coffee, tea, and water ($5-$10 per month), and more. Just these items alone can cost you $500 and up. Now factor in that many clinics have a medical assistant room or an eligibility and benefits room, or a Billing room, and you’re losing revenue opportunities by not having that room producing billable services. It is for this reason that many offshore staffing and remote sites for these positions are being established. More and more clinics are going away from the administrative, billing, and clinical task management being performed at the clinic. Imagine if you were paying $7,000 of rent per month and could downsize your office to $5,000 in rent? Imagine if you could stay in that same $7,000 per month facility and treat 30 more patients per day with an average collection of $100 per visit… that’s $3,000 more per day and $60,000 more per month, and $720,000 per year.

PART 2: MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTIONISTS

Transcriptionists have added values:

All of the above information and savings found in Medical Assistants will apply to transcriptionists, but the major difference here is the ability to be one on one with a patient in the room. Most Medical Transcriptionists can be Medical Assistants, but not all Medical Assistants are Transcriptionists. Live scribes use Voice Over Internet Phones (VoIP) to document everything the Doctor wishes to record from the moment your doors open to the moment you close for $9 - $12 per hour. The provider simply clicks a button on their phone or tablet and begins the session, while the Livescribe records and performs all drop-downs within your EMR. The provider then checks the visit note and signs off and then the billing takes it from there. Imagine a world where your providers can look their patients in the eyes instead of front facing a computer. 

SUMMARY:

Outsourcing is not a replacement model. Remote clinical staffing is an extension of your practice to help your providers and onsite staff focus on patient care and the experience those patients have. Imagine for one second, if your medical assistants could focus on collecting one patient testimonial per day instead of the endless data entry. Think of the marketing and referral system, surveys, and testimonials you could achieve.

Remote Staffing is meant to help your clinic where you need it most by scaling your margins and increasing patient outcomes. If you are interested in learning more about remote staffing and would like a FREE 30-day Trial, click here

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Sources:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf