Healthcare Outsourcing: Top Benefits for Providers

Outsourcing healthcare services is on the rise. The Mayo Clinic Proceedings reports that in 2017 alone, the U.S. healthcare sector increased outsourcing by 36%. As of 2020, every hospital outsources at least one business function.

Yet, while the benefits are many, there is increasing concern. What are the risks involved? Does outsourcing benefit or detract from patient care? How are employees affected? Are patients’ protected health records at risk?

Here, we’ll explore how healthcare facilities use medical outsourcing to their benefit and the steps they take to reduce risks.

What Is Medical Outsourcing?

Medical outsourcing refers to healthcare practitioners turning to third-party professional providers. From medical transcription to billing and answering services, the trend to turn to outside support is growing.

Today, nearly limitless services provide outsourcing for the healthcare industry. Some of the most popular include medical billing and coding, medical answering services, transcription, insurance claim processing, and laboratory testing.

Why Healthcare Providers Outsource

By carefully selecting outsourcing healthcare services, healthcare providers can reduce costs while enhancing their patients’ experience and health outcomes. Rising costs, reduced reimbursements, and labor shortages contribute to the growing need to outsource services.

Healthcare practitioners and their staff can focus more on direct, in-house patient care by utilizing outsourcing companies for administrative tasks. By delegating non-clinical and indirect care roles, staff have more time to concentrate on their commitment to their patients, providing the finest service and experience possible.

Key Benefits of Medical Outsourcing

The key benefits of medical outsourcing include the following:

Reduce Costs: Unlike full-time employees, outsourcing medical services is scalable, enabling healthcare providers to use their services only when needed.

Solves Labor Shortages: While “solve” may be an overstatement, outsourcing helps narrow the gap between the needed and available workforce. For instance, the Bureau of Health Workforce reports a projected shortage of 78,610 full-time registered nurses (RNs) in 2025. Outsourcing nurse triage services provides high-quality patient care without the financial and time-laden burden of finding and hiring full-time staff.

Improves Efficiency: By turning to outsourcing solutions for administrative tasks, you allow healthcare staff to focus on patients. This solution not only improves patient satisfaction and outcomes, but it also reduces staff burnout.

Faster Onboarding: Instead of going through the lengthy hiring process and training, experienced healthcare outsourcing companies have qualified experts who can instantly jump on board.

Enhancing Work-Life Balance: One of the greatest challenges in the healthcare industry is burnout. A survey by the American Medical Association in 2023 showed that over 48% of physicians were experiencing at least one symptom of burnout. By getting the support you and your staff need, you experience reduced stress and a more relaxing, happier life.

Technical Upgrades: Technology is moving at a rapid pace, making it hard to keep up with, either financially or operationally. Medical outsourcing services give healthcare practices access to cutting-edge technology that often enhances patient care and operations while lowering costs.

Commonly Outsourced Services in Healthcare

Commonly outsourced services include the following:

• Medical Answering Services: How often have you walked into the front office to see several phones blinking, indicating calls on hold? And how many of those calls are abandoned? Ensuring patients’ calls are promptly answered is good for your practice, your bottom line, and your staff.

Medical answering services schedule appointments, answer standard questions, direct urgent calls, and provide patient outreach, a time-consuming endeavor that results in a reduction in missed appointments and better patient compliance.

At notifyMD®, our highly-trained virtual assistants are available 24/7/365 and on a moment’s notice.

• Nurse Triage Services: On-call registered nurses support patients who call your practice experiencing concerning symptoms. They evaluate patients using advanced protocols and their experience, determining the level of care they require.

• Switchboard Services: Virtual switchboard operators streamline hospital communications by routing calls, responding to emergencies, and providing information.

• Secure Messaging: Keeping patient information safe is a top priority among all healthcare providers. But in today’s digital world, sending online information is a part of everyday life. Outsourcing secure messaging gives you access to secure messaging platforms for patient-doctor communications as well as communications between staff and third-party vendors.

• Medical Transcription: Commonly outsourced, this service transcribes patients’ records and notes.

• Billing and Medical Coding: Outsourcing these administrative tasks frees your staff to focus on the things that matter–your patients.

Things to Consider Before Outsourcing

One of the significant concerns revolving around medical outsourcing is patient data. How do you trust third-party vendors to protect patients’ sensitive healthcare information?

In many ways, you can’t.

According to the American Hospital Association, third-party data breaches hit the healthcare industry more than any other in 2023. Almost 60% of the over 77 million people affected by data breaches were due to an attack on a healthcare business associate.

As hospitals and health systems strengthen their systems and become more challenging targets, cybercriminals look to softer targets, such as third-party associates. Now, more than ever, it’s essential to implement third-party risk-based controls and prepare incident response and recovery plans.

At notifyMD®, we recommend HITRUST certification requirements for third-party services. As the first answering service to be HITRUST Certified, we know the level of commitment it requires. This framework offers greater patient data security and protection, integrating the various standards, including HIPAA, NIST, and ISO, into a comprehensive program.

HITRUST is the gold standard in health information privacy and security.

Healthcare practices should also consider a company’s expertise, years in business, location, and the ability to integrate with existing software and systems.

At notifyMD®, we’ve served the medical community for over 30 years. Our U.S.-based healthcare virtual receptionists understand the culture and language and are familiar with our healthcare industry. We make it a point to integrate with the most popular platforms.

Is your healthcare practice ready to experience the benefits of a secure, U.S.-based medical answering service? To learn more about the many services we provide, contact notifyMD®.