Healthcare financial management : journal of the Healthcare Financial Management Association
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A cost-accounting analysis can help group practices assess their costs of doing business and determine the profitability of managed care contracts. Group practices also can use cost accounting to develop budgets and financial benchmarks. ⋯ The next step is to calculate costs per procedure. The results can be used to evaluate operational cost efficiency as well as help negotiate managed care contracts.
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Physicians increasingly are assuming the status of employees in healthcare organizations. Physicians also are seeing restrictions imposed on their practices by healthcare organizations seeking to control costs of care delivery. ⋯ In addition, physicians' attempts to unionize frequently have failed due to provisions of the National Labor Relations Act, which authorize collective bargaining only among individuals designated as "employees." Physicians seeking to form unions often are thwarted by the argument that they are not employees, but rather students, independent contractors, or supervisors, and therefore not entitled to protection under the act. Nonetheless, a number of recent developments, such as the American Medical Association's decision to endorse unionization by physicians and the National Labor Relations Board's decision that attending physicians should be regarded as employees, not supervisors, are creating a climate more conducive to physician unionization in the United States.
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Healthc Financ Manage · Sep 1999
Using activity-based costing to track resource use in group practices.
Research shows that understanding how resources are consumed can help group practices control costs. An American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons study used an activity-based costing (ABC) system to measure how resources are consumed in providing medical services. ⋯ They measured resource consumption by assigning costs to each process according to how much time is spent on related work activities. When group practices understand how their resources are being consumed, they can reduce costs and optimize revenues by making adjustments in how administrative and clinical staff work.