Small healthcare practices face a host of unique challenges. While many providers appreciate the autonomy and flexibility of owning their own medical practice, this independence brings a breadth of hazards that grow every year as the healthcare industry continues to evolve and consolidate. This tradeoff of independence often means overcoming significant hurdles that larger healthcare organizations are not burdened with.
The lack of economies of scale is apparent in a wide variety of areas. From lower bargaining power and revenue uncertainty, to the rising cost of supplies and regulation, to higher per unit technology costs, and a lack of dedicated analytics staff. The smaller the practice, the smaller the profit margin is per patient.
However, properly implemented technology can help bridge that gap. Accurate and well-positioned analytics can help identify the best avenues for growth that will allow a small, independent practice to succeed in this difficult industry.
Often practices have so much data at their fingertips, but don’t know how to clean, standardize, and master it in a way that is both flexible and actionable to their practice. This data doesn’t have to only be what is homegrown within a practice’s system. It may include data coming in from lots of other specialty practices and providers. Things like lab tests and provider transcripts from other institutions are all important pieces of the puzzle – if you can utilize them. Collection is the easy part, but acting on that data is the hard part
Here at SIG, we specialize in incorporating all of these different kinds of data into a cohesive data warehouse and analytics platform, at a cost that is feasible for small practices. While large healthcare conglomerates may have whole teams of analytics staff, a small practice doesn’t have that luxury. In a small office, staff already wear too many hats – from answering phones, to taking vitals, to doing technical support – but the profit margins aren’t large enough to justify a dedicated analytics team.
This is the environment that SIG thrives in. We can put in the dedicated time it takes to evaluate data and extract the information you need, all on a budget. Rather than having time-strapped staff waste time sorting through a mess of dirty data to find what they need, SIG can put it right at their fingertips and save valuable staff hours.
SIG specializes in this exact kind of healthcare data transformation. Give us a call, tell us your data problems, and hear our solutions.
