Manage indirect practice expense the way you practice medicine: with information

Practice and hospital economics

There has been a significant effort over the past 10 years to attempt to control the rate of increase in the cost of medical care. However, as is true of any economic system, there are multiple stakeholders involved and often competing motivations. The single largest source of medical inflation is the cost of pharmaceuticals; however, this topic is not directly discussed in this article Similarly, the cost of medical insurance products is not included as these issues cannot be directly addressed by physician behavior. The body of this discussion focuses on costs directly experienced by or potentially controlled by physicians. These areas include practice expense and margin and hospital direct costs and margin. It is essential for physicians to understand fully factors they can potentially control and areas they may be able to influence in this troubling era of cost containment.

Estimating medical practice expenses from administering adult influenza vaccinations

Potential business losses incurred vaccinating adults against influenza have not been defined because of a lack of estimates for medical practice costs incurred delivering vaccines. We collected data on vaccination labor time and other associated expenses. We modeled estimates of per-vaccination medical practice business costs associated with delivering adult influenza vaccine in different sized practices. Per-shot costs ranged from USD 13.87 to USD 46.27 (2001 dollars). When compared with average Medicare payments of USD 11.71, per-shot losses ranged from US$ 2.16 to USD 34.56. More research is needed to determine less expensive delivery settings and/or whether third-party payers need to make higher payments for adult vaccinations.