Dermatology: Nonclinical Staffing Shortages and the Impact on Revenue Cycle Efficiency

Like any medical specialty, dermatology practices are constantly looking to stay on top of the trends that are negatively impacting their industry. The most top of mind trend impacting these teams today? Staffing shortages — for both clinical and non clinical staff. Not only do challenges like this impact practices in the obvious way, like impediments to patient scheduling and hiring delays, but they have a downstream impact on the overall financial health of the business. 

The staffing challenges facing dermatology today are leading to significant roadblocks for revenue cycle teams who are trying to keep the financial arm of the business running smoothly and effectively.

Staffing Challenges Across Healthcare

Across all of the challenges facing healthcare practices, staffing woes seem to be having the most significant impact. This doesn’t quite come as a shock given the increased rates of physician burnout post-Covid 19 pandemic, but what does come as a surprise to most is that these challenges are more prevalent on the nonclinical side of the business.

A 2023 report from Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) shared that 56% of medical groups say that staffing is their biggest roadblock to productivity — and nonclinical roles such as clerical positions, customer service, and back office revenue cycle management roles were the top response.

The challenges surrounding nonclinical hiring can drastically slow down revenue cycle operations and speed to cash, with one respondent reporting that “the shortage with nonclinical staff affects the ability for the organization to efficiently move patients through the system and ensure timely reimbursement.”

Compounding these staffing challenges is the increase in mandated salaries for healthcare workers. Many states are approving significant wage increases for healthcare workers from anywhere from 10% to 30% of their salary — which proves to be a double edged sword for recruitment and retention. The increased salaries better attract and retain talent, but they’re making quite the impact on the practice’s bottom line. 

For example, Clearwave calculated that for a team of 4 nonclinical staff members, a 10% increase in minimum wage (at $25 an hour for a 40 hour week), results in a $74,000 annual increase in salary and benefit expenses. This is a massive financial undertaking for teams who are already struggling to reach their revenue potential.

Dermatology Hiring and Retention Roadblocks

Dermatologists are not immune to the impacts of the healthcare staffing shortages. In fact, they may be more significantly affected due to the rising number of skin cancer diagnoses in the United States. The American Cancer Society predicts 100,640 new melanomas will be diagnosed in 2024 alone, a number that represents an increase in new diagnoses by 7.3%. In a single year in the United States, dermatologists see billions of patients.

With an increasing number of skin cancer cases, billions of patients seeking care, and nonclinical staffing challenges posing the biggest risk to productivity — how can revenue cycle teams at dermatology practices do more with less and prevent revenue leakage?

Technology to Drive Productivity and Speed to Cash

If the biggest roadblock to productivity is nonclinical teams not having the bandwidth to efficiently move patients through the system and ensure timely reimbursement, the solution lies within technology that can offload manual burden and take on the time consuming, tedious revenue cycle tasks.

Adonis Intelligence, for example, is purpose-built for healthcare. The platform’s AI-driven alerts and recommendations, actionable insights, and billing automations help revenue cycle teams save time, mitigate denials, and drive speed-to-cash.

With Adonis Intelligence, dermatology practices like U.S. Dermatology Partners and Metropolis Dermatology are:

1. Getting paid faster, by predicting and mitigating denials
2. Collecting more revenue, through underpayments detection and resolution
3. Saving time, by intelligently identifying and addressing/actioning root cause issues
4. Staying ahead, through tracking and adapting to evolving payer policies

If staffing shortages are leaving your practice’s nonclinical team feeling like they’re always playing catch-up, you might be interested in learning how Adonis Intelligence can help your team overcome their productivity roadblock.

When asked about Adonis, Gurpal Singh, CEO of U.S. Dermatology, said that Adonis “demonstrated a significant level of speciality-specific expertise that was forged by their experience with other large dermatology groups. We’re thrilled to be partnered with Adonis who, unlike other solution providers, is willing to meet us where we are on our RCM journey and scale to a holistic platform approach over time.”

See Adonis in action, here.