End Negative Ops Margins: Part III
Welcome to our 4 Part series on optimizing margins by ending negative ops margins. Each week we will present a new Part, up to 4 Parts. At the end of the 4th week, we will make available to you, on request, all 4 Parts as a single booklet for your consideration. Please don’t hesitate to email us with questions or comments.
<<Read Part I <<Read Part IIPART III - Behind the 8-Ball?
ARE YOU A SMALL HOSPITAL?
DO YOU HAVE NEGATIVE MARGINS FROM HERE TO THE NEXT DECADE?
ARE YOU BEHIND THE 8-BALL?...NOT NECESSARILY...
Small hospitals seemingly start and stay behind the 8-ball....in terms of:
• Experience...yet, you don’t need much experience to implement these solutions.
• Numbers of staff...you don’t need high staff numbers to implement these easy-to-implement solutions.
• Enough time...these margin-enhancing solutions can be quickly implemented.
• Depth of practical solution knowledge...you can very quickly learn and quickly implement these solutions.
These solutions are implementable with few staff with little experience and with only a minimal implementation work-load. Small hospitals do start and seem to stay behind the 8-ball...but...
• You don’t need to be a fully-staffed 300-bed hospital to implement dozens of these solutions.
• A 30-bed hospital with its much smaller staff will do an excellent job of solution implementation of these already-elsewhere-implemented solutions.
• You don’t need deeply solution-knowledgeable staff to be able to implement 100s of these proven-in-practice, already-implemented solutions.
• Small hospitals can implement these solutions quickly, easily, timely (soon enough) and do so on a cost-efficient and cost-effective basis.
However, solution implementation inhibiting excuses abound, making a bad situation worse:
In spite of the fact that this multi-solution, proven-in-practice approach is designed to be....and is...
- “No Time”: No over-time or extra time required to implement these solutions. The sooner solutions are implemented, the sooner new net dollars are available, quickly increasing day’s cash on hand and ops margins.
- “No Work”: The newly gained new savings and new net revenues will allow hospital to affordably use some temporary, contracted external experienced staff for rapid implementation assistance...gaining quicker and bigger new dollar results.
- “No Risk”: In effect, your small hospital is guaranteed a substantial net gain in dollars.
Non-valid solution implementation inhibiting excuses actually do inhibit and slow implementation...These excuses include:
• “It’s too good to be true” ...the most common excuse
• “It lacks credibility.”
• ”It’s just not a fit for us.”
• “We don’t have the staff numbers or time to implement.”
• “Our staff won’t like it.”
• ”Our Board won’t like it.”
• “Our community won’t like it.”
• ”Why rock the boat?”
• “We can’t afford to do that.” This is my favorite excuse: In other words, “We can’t afford to save or make money...or to get rid of our negative ops margins,”...etc., etc., etc.
This endless array of excuses and rationales not to implement, flourish, in spite of the fact that:
• These solutions have been already successfully implemented in 100s of hospitals.
• A 100% of these solutions produce substantial and often-massive, new net dollars.
It’s never necessary for these solutions’ implementation to have:
• layoffs, overtime, service closures, service contractions, new hires, new expenses, more experience, more time, out-of-pocket cash, etc.
Q. What is the most puzzling excuse for non-implementation?
A. A CFO’s fear that his/her CEO or Board will ask:
• “What took you so long?”
• “Wouldn’t a better CFO have done that years ago?”
For a better and more detailed understanding of where ops margin-enhancing solutions come from and how they evolve and work, please see below.
For some answers to many questions, including some unusual questions and some unexpected answers...please see our Reverse Q&A in Part IV.
Learn more about our Margin Solutions Express Service for Hospitals
Meet the Author:
Rick brings over 35 years of experience in the healthcare industry helping hospitals and health systems on an enterprise-wide basis. He has worked as a Partner at a “Big Four” accounting/consulting firm, as a Managing Principal at one of the largest accounting/consulting firms in the Midwest, as a Chief Medical Officer at a 50 hospital/health system and as a Founder/CEO of a hospital consulting firm serving hospitals in 33 states.
As the leader of Microscope’s Margin Solutions, Rick works with hospitals to utilize a unique and patented approach to address hospitals’ needs for bottom-line enhancements by substantially increasing their savings, revenues and collections on a customized basis for each hospital/system. These bottom-line improvements facilitate cost-effectiveness and cost-efficiency, all without layoffs.
He is a member of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, Physicians Without Borders and the Sierra Club.
Rick was educated and trained at Johns Hopkins and Columbia Universities.
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