I was doing my social network marketing due diligence in the morning and the basic question in Facebook hit me; what’s on your mind today?  The basic answer is Healthcare Reform.

Let me give you a little piece of information before we start.  I have a bachelor’s degree in math so for me it is very easy to see everything in numbers and facts.  Therefore when I look at healthcare reform I look at it from the numbers point of view and not the political angle.  So you guessed it, healthcare reform is on my mind today.

Now let’s start with the basic math.  Covering people with pre-existing conditions is risky and expensive. If I’m in business I have to minimize risk to make sure to cover my costs.  Also, higher risk should equal higher profits to incentivize me to jump in. In addition to that, under healthcare reform I have to cover additional services “for free”.  Yet nothing is free in life as the insurance company still needs to pay the hospitals and doctors for those “free services”.  Also, if I’m the insurance company I’m not allowed to discriminate based on individual’s condition so the alternative is simple; increase costs across the board.

I’m now shopping for health insurance for some clients and the rumors I hear are that the increase for this year is going to be around the 34% mark.  In one of my offices we pay around $640 per month per employee.  So this increase is the equivalent to $217 per employee per month or $2,600 per year.  My total healthcare expense per employee will be $857.6 per month or $10,291 per year.  Under healthcare reform, the penalty per worker is only $2,000 per year.  So it will be cheaper to pay the penalty and give each employee a $500/month ($6,000/year) allowance for them to buy their insurance on the exchange rather than continue to pay for health insurance.

Let’s move on to another topic, compliance.  From the top of my mind I can account for these positions:

  Title                                  Average Salary
Privacy Officer                            $48,090
Security Officer                          $77,000
Billing Compliance                    $62,000
OSHA                                              $59,000
Risk Management                     $99,007

For hospitals, although expensive this is a cost of doing business.  For physician’s Practices this is an unreachable goal that will break their backs.  So the basic answer has been to pile these responsibilities on top of the officer manager or a group of employees to do as an additional duty in addition to their primary duties.  Since each position is potentially a full time job a lot of the requirements are not completed which in addition to increasing the liability may result in increase overhead and potentially operational costs.

The only answer I have been able to come up with to this challenge is Taino Consultants Compliance suite where as a client I would pay a fix monthly fee to have someone review and update my policies, create forms and give me the ability to complete on line and upload as part of my compliance policies and remind me of the tasks needed to be done on a timely basis.

By the way, I forgot to mention that each compliance program comes with its own education requirements that must be met as a minimum upon hiring the employees and once per year.  I can complete the training in house but that means shutting down.  Again as a numbers person then I have to consider the loss of revenue while we are down plus the expenses regarding the trainer and the staff productivity.  No matter the size or how I slice it, a couple of thousand of dollars.  So again I end up looking for solutions and the best fit for my situation depending on the facility.  In this case, Uber University provides me with an on demand curriculum that the staff can complete at any time via the Internet.  So my issues of loss productivity are gone and I can pick the topics as I need them.

Of course I also have other things in my mind like the potential reductions in costs due to changes in Medicare and diversifying the income based on each business model to make sure we not only survive but thrive in this environment.  So at the end of the day my mind is full of opportunities, marketing, operations and of course serving my community and my clients.  So now is my turn to ask; what is on your mind today?