Medical practice saves $25,000 annually by going paperless

One of the biggest draws to going paperless is the cost saving potential. This is easy to understand, as every business is looking for a way to save a few extra dollars, especially when the economy is still in recovery mode. In many instances, however, talk is cheap and seeing these strategies in the field is the easiest argument.

A recent Health Tech article features a profile of the opening of a new medical practice in Alberta, Canada. It covers how they went paperless and the benefits that were gleaned from it. The new facility was the idea of several doctors who hired Martin Penninga to be the office manager.

When looking for a new office space, Penninga purposely looked for a space that was too small for document storage. He cites that previous clinics he had worked in took nearly one-third of the total building space. Physicians had overhead costs of as much as 40 percent of billing revenue and required 1.5 nurses for every single physician to do administrative work.

While many of the physicians were hesitant to adopt these news solutions, they agreed. The practice, which opened in 2011, has saved $6,500 in per-physician annual costs. It also booked $25,000 more in revenue per physician than the old clinic. This has led to an overall growth for the practice of 28.4 percent.

The effect was more than just in the money. The clinic doubled the number of physicians on staff and increased the number of patients seen per year by 1,200.

This was mainly possible because the office went paperless. By partnering with an document storage and scanning practice, any business can start moving into a digital format and start saving money.

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