In addition to her busy family practice, Dr. Jessica Howard has a focused practice in dermatology and is a training centre for family medicine at Western University. Her practice operates primarily in a rural setting, caring for approximately 1,250 rostered and numerous un-rostered patients. Dr. Howard shared some of the challenges she faced with her practice and how DoctorCare has supported her in maximizing revenue and better managing her roster.
“DoctorCare has been really helpful in working with us to move the practice forward instead of constantly playing catch-up and putting out fires. They are looking at all the ways we can best serve so we can improve patient care instead of just cleaning up messes all the time.”
DoctorCare: Tell us some of the challenges you have faced in your practice.
Dr. Howard: One of our challenges was managing overhead costs. I was also just sort of guessing with roster management, and I was guessing very badly. I was good at de-rostering people, but I never re-rostered them. Our staff could execute directions to roster or de-roster patients, but they weren’t able to evaluate who we should choose.
DoctorCare: When DoctorCare approached you about their Patient Care service, what resonated with you?
Dr. Howard: Doing the leg work of figuring out who should be rostered and who shouldn’t be rostered and doing the actual rostering was very appealing to me. It’s something that I wanted to do, but we are just too busy in the clinic.
The other important thing for us is that this is an outsourced, off-site service. We are trying to reduce our HR load, so not having to add new staff to do this, deal with managing a new task, or create stress in the office while still being able to get a handle on the rostering was also attractive.
DoctorCare: What kind of impact has adding the Patient Care service had on your practice?
Dr. Howard: DoctorCare has been super helpful with respect to increasing my capitation payments; with getting everybody rostered, keeping track of who should be rostered, who should not, and who should be de-rostered. I found that helpful, and my income has gone up significantly. Some of the struggles we were having with overhead are less of an issue now because we have more income.
My DoctorCare reports also tell me my targets—in terms of what I should be billing more for and decreasing outside use, for example.
The service is excellent and just takes a lot of mental load off both us and our staff. We said to our staff that we were taking this off their plate and giving it to DoctorCare so they could focus on other things.
DoctorCare: What’s next for your practice in terms of building efficiencies and improving billings?
Dr. Howard: I think the next step for us would be to better understand how often we should assess who should be re-rostered. Now that we’ve rostered all these people who were un-rostered, we’re evaluating usage monthly. For example, if we did de-roster somebody and their acute illness gets better, should we re-roster them?
Another area that we are looking at is recalls and ways DoctorCare could help us streamline recalls so it isn’t so administratively heavy or time-consuming for my staff. I know this is one of the things that they’re good at.
DoctorCare: Is there anything else you’d like to add about your experience working with DoctorCare?
Dr. Howard: DoctorCare has been really helpful in working with us to move the practice forward instead of constantly playing catch-up and putting out fires. They are looking at all the ways we can best serve so we can improve patient care instead of just cleaning up messes all the time.
So that’s freed up a lot of space, but I think that one of the most significant values, for me personally as somebody who deals with a lot of the staffing concerns this takes a bunch of stuff off my plate. I think that for physicians, that’s a huge, huge value. I get my reports, they’re very easy to read, I have all the actionable items, and I know what I need to do.
Roster Management Support from DoctorCare
Roster management requires considerable time and effort to ensure patients are being rostered and de-rostered strategically. DoctorCare can help you effectively manage your roster, ensuring you can maximize your revenue potential with minimal requirements on your part.
With our new service, Patient Care, we will identify patients who are not currently rostered to you. We will then send our rostering forms as well as help you collect forms and bill the rostering code.
Interested in our Patient Care service? Email us at info@doctorcare.ca to get started!
