Outsourcing Can Make Good Business Sense

Most businesses decide to outsource functions because doing so is more cost-effective than hiring and paying employees to perform those tasks. There’s a more valuable benefit to outsourcing, though. It frees up employees to focus on higher-value activities that help a business achieve its long-term goals. For a medical practice, outsourcing back-office tasks allows employees to focus on patients who are present in the office, have scheduled appointments or who have recently been seen in the office.

In smaller medical practices in which physicians themselves may wear many hats, outsourcing is an even more valuable tool. Physician burnout is a real and pervasive problem. Caring for patients and struggling to complete all of the cumbersome administrative tasks associated with a medical practice isn’t beneficial to patient or provider.

What Can Be Successfully Outsourced

Think about your medical practice and your priorities. Your top priority is to provide outstanding, attentive care to your patients. Which back-office tasks are necessary – but also tedious and time-consuming? Which functions can you safely outsource to a third-party and, in fact, may actually be performed better by a third-party specialist? Here are four examples.

Medical Billers. This is a highly complex, tricky task that is critical to your practice’s survival. It makes sense to outsource this vital responsibility to a team of individuals who are well versed in the nuances of claims processing. Medical billers will be able to do the job more quickly and more accurately – and you’ll feel a weight lifted off your shoulders when you hand this over to a specialist.

Medical Transcription. This is a no-brainer. Transcribing your records and notes is a redundancy that you and your staff shouldn’t spend time on. Transcription services typically have technologies that enable them to do the job much more quickly than you could in-house.

IT Management. Software development, population health challenges, analytics, electronic health records, health information exchange… the IT demands of a medical provider are complex and continually evolving. Outsourcing your IT could, arguably, be the smartest decision you make as a practice owner. One survey of hospital administrators that outsourced their IT found that 90 percent had achieved or were near achieving a return on investment in just three months.

Marketing. You’re a doctor, not a spin doctor. Having a website and marketing presence is essential. But it’s definitely a job that’s best turned over to a company that specializes in that. Your job is to solve complex medical puzzles, not to puzzle over how to get Google to rank your website higher.

Outsourcing your medical practice’s back-office tasks can improve productivity and profitability. However, make sure any third-party provider you work with understands your privacy obligations under HIPAA and has checks and balances in place to ensure the privacy of your patient’s information. Ask for references and call them. The vendors you choose will be an extension of your practice, so make sure you trust them implicitly.

The post Consider Outsourcing These Three Functions in Medical Clinic Backoffices appeared first on Trinovation Healthcare Services.

But I think it’s important for every business, right from growing businesses all the way up to large enterprises, to know exactly why they should or shouldn’t outsource their technical support processes. And, more importantly, what kind of problems they should expect to be solving. There are pros and cons of outsourcing and one must consider those before taking the outsourcing decision. So here’s a head-to-head comparison between outsourcing your technical support, and keeping it in-house:

Round One – Total Cost of Ownership

When you outsource, it basically means you pay someone to hire support reps, train them, get resources and do everything that goes with it. Sure, you’re paying for calls to be routed overseas but in the end, with VOIP and less stringent telecom regulations, outsourcing your technical support is often cheaper than doing it yourself.

When it comes to the TCO of your technical support process, outsourcing manages to draw first blood without breaking a sweat. If the people cost adds up to the biggest hit in your tech support, outsourcing the team to a low-cost centre half way across the globe might actually save you big numbers in the year-end report.

Verdict: If you have a people-centric technical support cell, outsourcing to a low-cost center might be a good idea.

Round Two – Scaling up (or down)

There comes a time in every technical support agent’s life when you realise you have more tickets coming in than the team can chew. Or that there are just too many agents manning lines that don’t ring as often as justified. Now, with these scenarios, the solution is to expand your support team or downsize it accordingly. That generally means you need to find the right people to add to or remove from your technical support help desk, and you need to find them quick.

Now, if you’d outsourced your technical support, you have the option to choose a vendor who can scale up, or take the shock for you on the fly. The vendor is the one who has to expand the support team or break it down. They’re the ones with the problem, not you. You’re removed from the decision and have been saved a lot of stress, time and money. And if you hadn’t outsourced it, well…you get the picture.

Of course, there are ways you can scale up your technical support in-house without scaling up the team, so blindly outsourcing it or leaving the onus on your vendor may not be the best idea.

Verdict: If adding more people to your tech support process is the only way to scale up, outsourcing can be a big, big relief.

Round Three – Quality Control

There’s a reason companies still prefer to build their own support team and oh boy, it’s a good one – when you outsource your technical support, you have no control over the quality of the support.

When you outsource technical support, you’re basically handing over the responsibility of making sure that your customers are getting correct, complete answers to their questions. You don’t have any control over whether the agents are going the extra mile to ensure that your customers are satisfied. All of your customer’s queries might be answered, but have they been answered accurately and completely? You have no idea.

Outsourcing kind of takes that power right out of your hands. You can only direct and hope for the best.

Verdict: If you’d like to build your brand on the basis of your technical support, keep it in-house.

The post What should you Outsource in Tech Support? appeared first on Trinovation Healthcare Services.

Answer your phone and deal with telemarketers for you.

Take messages while you’re away from your desk.

Coordinate team projects to ensure milestones are being met.

Search travel sites to find your next, affordable vacation!

Record & transcribe your meetings so you can feel safe zoning out.

Handle your calendar to ensure you don’t overbook yourself.

Order birthday/anniversary gifts for your wife/husband/mom so you don’t look like an overly busy jerk that forgets important dates!

Find a reputable dog walker to take your puppy out during late nights at the office.

Schedule fun Facebook posts for your personal profile so it looks like you are doing things outside the office!

Schedule Facebook posts for your business so you can stay top-of-mind with customers and leads.

Tweet on your behalf so you can become a respected online influencer.

Make reservations for two at a nice restaurant and send you twenty email reminders so you don’t miss dinner with your better half.

Order things you need on Amazon so they arrive at your doorstep like magic!

Record him/herself reading NY Times best seller books so that you can listen to them in the car and tell people you always make time for reading.

Provide support to your customers at all hours of the day and night so you can get some sleep.

Make sure all information is entered into your CRM so you don’t miss out on sales.

Handle small data entry tasks so you can stop beating your head on the desk knowing there are a million other things you need to do.

Reach out to mommy bloggers to help promote your new product/service.

Post ads to Craigslist like, “Lost: Mind. If found, please return to owner as soon as possible.”

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