Going Big
By Frank Leggett. Dr Pran Yoganathan (left) and Dr Farzan Bahin of The Centre for Gastrointestinal Health (Photography: Simon Davidson).
When a medical practice owner wants to grow their business, expand to more locations and help more people with their medical issues, there are some obvious changes to be made. First and foremost, they must take on associates and increase the number of support staff. What is frequently underestimated is the increase in administrative work.
Dr Pran Yoganathan started The Centre for Gastrointestinal Health in Sydney’s north-west suburb of Castle Hill with expansion in mind from the outset. Within a few years of opening, the business had branches in Bowral and Gregory Hills.
“I soon realised I needed more of a team approach to deal with the medical needs of the community,” says Dr Yoganathan. “Gastroenterology is an extremely busy specialty where waiting times for a specialist can blow out to many months. I wanted to keep expanding the business with a hand-picked team to which I could delegate responsibilities with confidence. I also realised I needed a partner who matched my vision and desire for growth.”
Dr Yoganathan found that partner in fellow gastroenterologist Dr Farzan Bahin. The two men had known each other since their junior doctor days. Since 2016, Dr Bahin had owned and run Hills Gastroenterology in Bella Vista, a suburb close to Castle Hill. In 2023, he merged his business into The Centre for Gastrointestinal Health where both doctors are now co-directors.
“Creating a group practice allowed us to run more efficiently and provide better working conditions for the doctors, nurses and support staff,” says Dr Bahin. “Patients were better served in a timely manner. It also gave us more scope to expand as there’s now a scalability to our business.”
The Centre for Gastrointestinal Health is presently in eleven locations across Sydney and regional NSW—Ashfield, Bella Vista, Bowral, Castle Hill, Gregory Hills, Strathfield and Ulladulla.
Taking account
As each new practice was added to the group, the infrastructure needs grew significantly. Administrative work, such as typing letters, note-taking and staying on top of accounts and billings, became almost unmanageable, even with increased numbers of secretaries. As a complement to gastroenterology, the business also started employing dietitians to aid in positive health outcomes—and the paperwork just kept increasing.
“Billings and accounts are labour-intensive and need attention to detail,” says Dr Bahin. “Whoever's responsible cannot be distracted by other tasks and yet our staff were constantly interrupted with client phone calls, emails and texts. It meant the turnover for billings was slow and human error was unavoidable. After speaking with Lena Wallish at Avant Practice Solutions, we knew their Billings+ service was exactly what we needed.”
Our experience with Billings+ and VoiceBox IT has been overwhelmingly positive It has moved key staff away deom administrative duties and enhanced our ability to be doctors
"The Billings+ App and expert Billings+ team can provide complete billing support, looking after everything from missed payments to unpaid invoices to claim rejections. The advantages of utilising this system were felt immediately at The Centre for Gastrointestinal Health.
“We had a lot of long overdue invoices and unclaimed debt we just couldn’t catch up and deal with,” says Dr Yoganathan. “Utilising Avant’s Billings+ saw the majority of that money recuperated in a short period of time. It was an amount well over $200,000.”
Outsourcing billings to a dedicated organisation increased efficiency and saw the error rate virtually disappear while the turnaround time was much faster. It also led to happier staff who were more gainfully employed. “
The staff previously allocated to this job were freed up to help with patient care or other aspects of their work portfolio,” says Dr Bahin. “The doctors at our business were thrilled to be paid promptly and on time.”
A positive note
Another overwhelming problem experienced at The Centre for Gastrointestinal Health was the sheer amount of note taking by doctors and letter writing by support staff. Each time a doctor saw a patient, they would manually write their notes relating to that case. A typist would then retype it, format it correctly and ensure it was sent to the correct people. A dozen doctors across the group, each seeing 10 to 15 patients a day, generated a mountain of correspondence. While the business employed experienced typists, they were not able to cope with the volume of work generated.
The issue was the time-consuming and clunky process. Hand writing notes took up the doctor’s time and created a huge amount of correspondence which overwhelmed staff. Additionally, having information change hands can open the door to errors, which is a risk for any medical practice.
The doctors once again turned to Lena Wallish at Avant Practice Solutions to help address the issue. She suggested that VoiceBox Intelligent Transcription could be an elegant solution. VoiceBox IT can help streamline workflows which can increase accuracy, as well as helping practices to save time and money.
“VoiceBox IT is an efficient technology-based solution to our problem,” says Dr Bahin. “The doctor simply dictates their notes into their smartphone—an immediate time saver. VoiceBox IT then uses AI with added human touch to transcribe that voice file with a high degree of accuracy. The letter is created using your preferred format and the final draft is checked by the doctor. Usually, this happens within the same day and often within a couple of hours.”
The letter file can then be sent to the patient and other doctors as confirmed by the attending doctor. VoiceBox IT can also be integrated into practice management software which can assist with communication and turnover times while reducing the workload.
“The whole process is much smoother and faster now,” says Dr Yoganathan. “Every step is covered—from the moment the patient makes an appointment to them coming through the door, undertaking a consultation, having the communication sent out and the procedure billed.”
Billings and accounts are labour-intensive and need attention to detail. Whoever's responsible cannot be distracted by other tasks and yet our staff were constantly interrupted with client phone calls, emails and texts. It meant the turnover for billings was slow and human error was unavoidable.
"Future growth
As medicine becomes more collaborative, particularly in complex cases, decision-making on treatment is often shared with several different specialists from different subspecialties. For example, someone with a lesion or problem in their bowel would likely have a radiologist look at the scans, a pathologist look at the biopsies, then two or three physicians provide their opinion, before a surgeon perform any operation that may be required.
The ability to have all the relevant information passed between these specialists in an efficient, accurate and timely manner is essential. Avant Practice Solutions is dedicated to assisting with the achievement of that goal.“
The Centre for Gastrointestinal Health has built a foundation of efficient and communicative doctors, nursing staff, dietitians and support staff,” says Dr Bahin. “Our brand sends a message to the community that we provide a holistic and lifestyle-based approach to their problems. Our style of group practice is a gastroenterology forerunner that I believe will gain traction in other specialties and locations.”
With the help of Avant Practice Solutions, The Centre for Gastrointestinal Health has overcome some of its most pressing problems. The administrative side of the business has been running smoothly, which has helped doctors and staff to be able to concentrate on other core responsibilities. “The more we streamline by using the services provided by Avant, the more we trust their services and the more likely we are to utilise them in other areas,” says Dr Yoganathan. “Our experience with Billings+ and VoiceBox IT has been overwhelmingly positive. It has moved key staff away from administrative duties and enhanced our ability to be doctors. At the same time, the outsourced work is overseen by specialists in that area. It’s been a massive blessing for us.”
As far as the future is concerned, Dr Yoganathan will not be constrained. “The future is only limited by the confines of our vision. If we can let our vision soar, then the sky's the limit.”
"When I first talked with Drs Yoganathan and Bahin, it was obvious they had big plans for The Centre for Gastrointestinal Health,” says Lena Wallish, Head of Practice Technology Services, Avant Practice Solutions. “These visionary physicians were looking to move away from the concept of a group practice and focus on a business that provided comprehensive management of the non-medical aspects of private practice, allowing clinicians to focus on the consuming task of meticulous patient care. At that time, the amount of administrative work, staffing issues and an accrual of unpaid accounts was making things difficult.“ After they signed up to Billings+, the first thing we did was to undertake a debtor project to recover their unpaid accounts. Virtually all the accounts were actioned and closed. After 12 months of their accounts being processed quickly, accurately and efficiently by Billings+, they signed up for our VoiceBox IT service. The centre's future prospects are huge. It’s been a joy to help such inspirational individuals achieve their goal."
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