Taya Gordon Tracks Where Money Leaks

Medical practices are losing where the money leaks out. The gap between what a practice spends and what it collects has widened enough that finding those leaks is no longer a once-a-year exercise. Taya Gordon, CEO of Atlas and Perpetual Healthcare, sat down to discuss why the financial pressure feels more urgent now and how practices can stop the bleeding.

Gordon’s list of leak points is not exotic, but it is often overlooked. Coordination of benefits is missed at the front desk, or patient responsibility is not collected. Providers deliver services and forget to document them. Denials pile up without appeals, and claims sit in accounts receivable for too long.

One of the more surprising sources of waste is the shredding contract. Practices often keep a rotation from the paper era that still bills a monthly minimum. With the shift to electronic records, the bins never fill up, yet the practice continues to pay for them.

This financial strain feels more urgent now because the disparity between the costs we're putting out and the reimbursement we're getting in has gotten so much larger. In addition, we have staff shortages, we have difficulty negotiating with payers for higher reimbursement, we have medical costs rising, and our technology costs have just skyrocketed. The tech stacks within our organizations have gone from maybe two or three main software systems to upwards of 15.

Benchmarking Expenses

For an administrator who has never benchmarked expenses, Gordon advises starting with analytics. You need to understand where you sit before making changes, so pull out invoices for the last 12 months. See what has been ordered and if it is optimized. Look for different GPO contracts to find savings.

Trustworthy data comes from established groups like MGMA, HFMA, and AAFP. However, Gordon warns that organizations often claim to be validated resources without real data. She suggests looking at medical societies that have long histories of historical data. But comparing apples to apples with your organization means being really thoughtful and being r

Staffing and Hidden Waste

Staffing is the biggest line item in most budgets, but cutting it blindly can do real damage. Gordon suggests looking at ratios and validated resources to see if you are right-sized. Many groups assume they need to cut staff, but the pressure to cut the staffing line is usually the wrong place to start.

Waste also hides in facility maintenance. Gordon identified shredding services as a top culprit. Contracts signed years ago often contain monthly minimum fees that are no longer necessary. That monthly fee adds up, even if the individual amount seems small.