Extra Services Can Boost a Rheumatology Practice’s Profitability, Patient Care

Both Drs. Bose and Su partnered with research companies, while Dr. Soloman’s practice has a research team with 15 staff members, including a chief of research and a research manager.

Here are a few tips to build your research services:

• Work with your potential research partner to make sure you’ll have enough patients to refer for studies. “Otherwise, the whole set up is a lot of work,” Dr. Su said.
• Consider whether you have enough patients who will want to take part in trials. “If you’re in an area where people have good insurance, it may be hard to find patients,” Dr. Su said. Her patients who take part in trials love participating and feel as if they are getting white glove service, she said.
• Be prepared to get familiar with the large amount of work and regulatory steps involved with setting up a trial. This will be the case even if you work with an outside company.
• Determine whether your staff will work a portion of their time with research and another portion with other duties. For example, this could be a 60/40 or 70/30 split, Dr. Soloman said.
• Know that with great work comes great responsibility. Taking part in and leading clinical trials is exciting, but a little nerve-wracking, too. “The buck stops with you when you’re the [principal investigator],” Dr. Soloman said. “It’s not something you should take lightly.”

Remote Therapeutic Monitoring

Some practices use remote therapeutic monitoring and chronic care management to track patients. These types of monitoring help both with patients on the individual level, and also population health management.

If your practice wants to try it, here are a few pearls to consider:

• Decide whether you want to partner with a company or have someone handle it in-house. Dr. Su used a company at first but then switched to in-house staff.
• Work with staff members who will be patient when it comes to teaching older patients about technology related to monitoring.

Vanessa Caceres is a medical writer in Bradenton, Florida.