In the world of medicine, healthcare providers often are focused only on giving good care, with the best equipment, the best medicines and the best machines. And this is important... but there three things that are equally important; money, margin and mission.
Sorry...some of you may be sighing... saying to yourself: greed plain and simple... but I ask you to not be so fast to judge.
You can't eat love...
It's a universal truth that most parents tell their sons and daughters that you can't eat love. Then they explain why can't get married until they have jobs or skills which allow them to earn enough money to take care of themselves; food, clothing, shelter and transportation.
My kids call this "Adulting." and they tell me over and over they hate it.
I tell them tht many people hate it LOL!! It's like flossing your teeth; few enjoy it, but it is necessary to keep your teeth.
You can't run a hospital with love either...
Unfortunately part of my job is to teach doctors how to document the care they provide better.
And when I say better, I mean enough to get paid at the level they and the hospital want to get paid.
You see it's not my job to teach doctors medicine, but it is my job to explain to them how to get paid, and more importantly to understand the connection between money, margin and mission.
Mission
The Nobel Mission of Medicine...
Cure the sick.
Heal the injured.
Eliminate sufferring.
Comfort the loved ones.
BUT... you can't do those things if your hospital is broke! ( Empty Wallet)
Money is necessary for advanced technology...
Money is not the root of all evil, but instead a vital ingredient in good helthcare.
Good care costs money
So my job is to explain to doctors and sometimes nurses, that the hospital must make enough money to pay it's bills and it's staff.
That means the hospital must make enough not just enough to cover it's costs, but it must make a little bit more to sty in business, this little bit extra is called the Margin.
Money is necessary for specialists.
No Money, No Margin, No Mission and No Medicine
Before I started studying the details of how insurance, payments and reimbursements work, I was always puzzled by one question: How can a business which has more customers then it can handle be broke or worse yet go out of business??
I found out the answer was a combination of mismanagement, poor reimbursements, poor documentation and a lack of understanding that Money pays for the Mission, and the Margin pays for Staff and Equipment, so even though all hospitals make money, not all have sufficient margins to pay for the mission.
So there you have it, a primer on hospitals, which although they look like temples to gods, they win or lose the game called staying in business much like other businesses: money and margin.
Its funny that institutions are like people, they look different on the outside, but once you study them and get to know them, they are more a like then different.
So a guy who makes a money losing bread factory profitable, may actually succeed in making a hospital profitable, if he/she ask enough questions, so they know how special aspects of the industry come into play.
