As we covered in our recent article, “Dental Service Organizations: Why It’s a Critical Time to Partner with a Staffing Agency—and How to Do It,” there are numerous reasons for DSOs to partner with a specialized agency like Medix. There’s one in particular which we want to focus on here: flexibility with your revenue cycle team. What exactly do we mean by that? It’s about having the ability to remain lean during hyper growth—scaling your team up and down quickly based on needs.
The benefits of having a flexible team are clear. Your organization will:
Save money.
By relying on temporary hires to handle short-term needs, you save on the higher costs to recruit permanent employees, along with long-term labor costs.
Meet budgets.
With the aforementioned cost savings associated with flexibility, it’s significantly easier to continuously control the size and payroll of your revenue cycle team, in order to meet budget.
React quickly.
When you have a new client or a surge in the volume of claims, you can find, screen, and onboard temporary staff quickly.
Benefit from new skills.
Sometimes, new people bring new skills. Before their work assignments end, their skills can be transferred to your full-time staff, increasing overall knowledge and ability.
Benefit from new perspectives.
New people also bring new perspectives. During their assignments, you can learn new approaches, methods and processes, and integrate them into your business.
Even though it’s not a primary focus of hiring temporary staff, you’re also building a pipeline of proven revenue cycle candidates. You’re making connections with professionals who may have the desire to return for another temporary position or even a permanent position. It’s almost always easier to rehire a former temp as a permanent, full-time employee, because they already understand your organization’s culture, business goals, and processes, making for a quicker ramp-up.
We’ve had numerous clients rely on temporary staff for busy, seasonal periods, as a part of their workforce planning efforts, but we’ve also helped clients react to unforeseen situations, including acquisitions, sharp organic growth, and even employee turnover. We not only screen candidates for experience and skills, but also for cultural fit, reducing your future turnover and the high costs associated with it.
Assess your current revenue cycle team, and determine where they’re excelling and lacking. Then consider how having a new level of flexibility will help. Where can you bring in temporary staff to prevent burnout of your full-time staff? Where can you insert someone for six months to help with collections? Which permanent and temporary positions will you need to fill with your DSO’s projected growth in 2024?
There are many questions to ask, but even more benefits to be had. The time to start reaping those benefits is now.