Working in an orthopedic practice, your first priority is to ensure your patients receive the care they need. However, there are many tasks to juggle that ensure your practice functions. You have to verify insurance eligibility, manage claims, maintain inventory, and monitor financials. Each of these time-consuming tasks makes it so you have less time to focus on what really matters—the patients.

One practice function that takes up a lot of valuable time is inventory management. Time spent tracking down missing inventory, correcting errors in manually entered patient information, and filing redundant paperwork piles up quickly; preventing you from getting to the work you actually care about.

Fortunately, with the right strategies, you can cut out these time-wasting activities entirely.

Get more time to focus on the health and well-being of patients with these five actionable ways to streamline inventory management at your orthopedic practice.

1. Use automated inventory management
2. Check patient eligibility upfront
3. Become paperless
4. Minimize claim denials
5. Get advice from experts

How many times have you prescribed a particular brace and couldn't find one in the stockroom? How much additional funds have you lost because you had to reschedule an appointment only for the patient to purchase their medical equipment online through a different company?

Inventory errors lead to stress when you don't have the exact equipment for the patient at the time of visit. Manual inventory management is error-prone, time-consuming, and it often leads to inventory shrinkage and dead stock.

Loss of inventory leads to a host of other problems within an orthopedic practice. Profitability of a practice takes a significant hit when DME goods are purchased but lost before they can be dispensed to a patient. In addition, trust is lessened both internally and towards customers. Automated inventory management avoids the issue of shrinkage all together. This means that you avoid tension with your employees, allowing you to maintain a healthy workplace culture. . Your quality of patient care will also increase as employees aren’t suspected of theft and you can focus on treatment.

A workflow management system will dispense, track, and replenish your DME inventory, non-DME, and serialized assets. This allows you to discrete inventory shrinkage, avoid dead stock, and save time doing paperwork. However, some automated inventory management systems are made up of several different programs that cause your processes to become jumbled and confusing.

Össur Empower is a single system with:

• Paperless dispensing process with barcode scanning and mobile access
• PAR level notifications and easy, automated purchase orders
• Independent inventory tracking at unlimited locations

When you and the patient are unsure about what a patient’s insurance will cover, neither party is very happy when information isn’t captured or an unexpected bill turns up. Verifying patient eligibility at the front desk ensures accurate and timely patient coverage information. 

A patient’s coverage can be checked manually by looking up the patient information in the insurance carrier database or by calling the carrier. However, this is time-consuming and often leads to decreased patient satisfaction due to wait time.  If your orthopedic practice is looking to speed up this verification process, increase upfront collections, and improve patient satisfaction, an electronic patient eligibility verification solution can automate this process.

Automatic patient eligibility verification will increase collections by providing the patient with accurate payment numbers at the time of dispensing. This saves them from an unexpected bill and helps your practice remain highly competitive in patient satisfaction.

Empower includes real-time patient eligibility and information at time of dispensing. This allows your practice to successfully capture ancillary DME income while integrating seamlessly into your current EMR. 

Every orthopedic practice is different, so how does Empower integrate with your specific processes?

1. Consult with you to understand your unique workflow
2. Optimize your processes to maximize patient experience while simultaneously capturing the necessary documentation for insurance reimbursements
3. Customize the Empower software to synchronize with your processes

You and your coworkers all got into the medical industry for one reason: to help people. That’s why endless paperwork is the most dreaded task at an orthopedic practice. You spend countless hours filling out forms, filing records, and organizing paperwork that could be spent caring for patients who need your help.

In many medical offices, the first thing a patient does when they walk in the door is receive a clipboard full of forms to fill out. There are far too many forms that are still being printed out, filled out, and signed, just to scan them back into your EMR. This experience can be improved for both the customer and staff with an electronic self-service solution. This efficient process will create an innovative experience for your customer and will prevent your staff from having to match up records, saving them a significant amount of time each day.

When it comes to inventory management, keeping track of stock and orders is nearly impossible to do efficiently on paper or even with manual spreadsheets. With inventory constantly changing, there’s no way a physical record can stay up-to date. Empower uses barcode scanning and is fully functional on your mobile device so you can manage your inventory without paperwork.

With Össur Empower, you can manage your paperwork electronically, no matter how many orders, patients, or locations. The workflow management solution will generate and store all the required documentation for your various tasks.

Even if you aren’t looking to use a workflow management solution, there are still a few ways you can cut down on time spent handling paperwork.

• Eliminate duplicate processes and the number of staff touches on each claim
• Remove unnecessary writing by including checkboxes instead of blank spaces
• Avoid printing and scanning by using electronic forms

Denied claims negatively affect your orthopedic office’s revenue, cash flow, and operational efficiency. Avoid the headache of denied claims by making sure all the necessary patient information is captured and the patient has the correct coverage to provide them with DME.

Some common errors in patient information that result in denied claims include:

• Typos. Manually entering modifiers, ICD10, and the HCPCS leaves room for typos and illegible information that can result in the claim being denied.
• Incomplete information. If there is any coding information missing, that could be a reason for a denied claim.
• Exclusion criteria. Each insurance plan has some exclusions that are not covered by the insurance provider.
• Expired policy. If the patient’s insurance plan has been terminated or expired, then the claim will be denied.
• Delay in filing. Typically, insurance providers have a limited window of time for you to submit a claim.
• Unpaid premiums. If a patient has outstanding payments they may fall out of coverage.

If you do run into denied claims, make sure to resubmit them. Denials can be resubmitted with corrected information to capture a significant amount of potential revenue. Make it standard procedure for your team to work on denied claims and prevent them from getting lost in the shuffle.

However, the best way to cut down on resubmitting claims and going back to find more information is to submit a clean claim the first time. Empower captures necessary information to reduce denials and saves you the hassle of going back to redo claims.

There are a lot of things to stay on top of at your orthopedic office. You have patients to care for, inventory to manage, staff to organize, and countless other things to run. With so many areas demanding attention, it’s easy for things to slip through the cracks. In addition, regulations are constantly changing, making it difficult to keep up.

Whether you hire staff with specific expertise or you outsource certain tasks, having expert advice could mean the difference between staying on top of the latest regulations or falling behind.

Save time and get guidance from specialized experts to avoid finding out about new regulations the hard way. With Empower, our team of experts continually shares the latest information regarding regulatory changes that may impact your DME business.

In addition to specialized knowledge, expert advice is valuable because fresh eyes are often able to identify ways to improve existing processes. The Empower team is trained in best practices throughout the healthcare industry. As we analyze your current DME business model, we provide unlimited and continuous guidance that will streamline, support, and drive current and future success at no extra cost. Whether you have a technical question, require industry advice, or an entire review of your DME program, your support partner will be there to help.

Managing your inventory out of spreadsheets is a daunting task—one that becomes even more difficult when you factor in the financing, productivity, and product spreadsheets you also deal with. Even with an automated system, there is so much data that it can be challenging to pull valuable insights.

With Empower, your clinic gains visibility into inventory standing and clinic performance. In addition, you get benchmarking data so you can compare your clinic against clinics like yours. Analytic dashboards provide easy-to-read insights into productivity, performance, stock, revenue, trends, and opportunities.

Easy-to-read dashboards open up the possibilities for what your clinic can do with its data. A few things your clinic will be able to do with Empower are:

• See a clear snapshot of your sales and stock performance
• Assess physician and location productivity
• Analyze product profitability by L code
• Identify opportunities and areas that can be optimized

Streamlining your orthopedic practice’s inventory management will save you more than just time. You’ll receive peace of mind knowing that your focus is on the people who rely on your office for care.

See how Össur Empower can help your practice be more efficient. Connect with a specialist for a customized demo that includes a review of your current workflow and projected savings.