Financial Advantages of Telepsychiatry

Financial
Advantages of
Telepsychiatry
At a typical County Mental
Health Center in California

We are often asked…

“Why would we want to pay you
a couple of hundred dollars an
hour when an in-house doctor
only costs us $107/hour?”

American Telepsychiatrists ™ Transforming Psychiatric Healthcare Access

In this presentation, we provide
actual numbers from 2011
services we provided to a
typical California county.


First rule?
 Comparing us by an hourly rate
doesn’t work because we only get
paid if a patient is seen.


How to really compare?
 The only way to compare us with
in-house doctors would be to
compare cost per patient
encounter rather than cost per
hourly rate.


Salaried Doctors:
A full-time adult psychiatrist costs
the county approximately
$196,426/yr plus benefits. If you add
in a conservative 20 percent for
payroll taxes, insurance, and
retirement benefits, that comes to
approximately $235,711/yr.


Salaried Doctors Working Days:
 With paid holidays, vacation, and
sick leave, remove approximately
30 business days of seeing patients
per year for an employed doctor.
 On average, there are 260 business
days per year. Subtract the 30
benefit days, and that leaves 230
business days/yr.


Patient No-Shows:
 The average no-show rate at this
county mental health clinic was 36
percent per day over the course of
2011. Add in late-
cancellations, and that rate goes
up to 41 percent.


 If the maximum number of patients
seen per day is 16, and you subtract
the 41 percent no-show/late-
cancellation rate, that leaves an
average of 10* patients per day seen
by the average in-house doctor.

(*actual numbers were in the range of five to
seven patients per day seen by an employed
psychiatrist)


Number of Patients seen and
cost per Patient:
 Using the high end, or 10 patients
seen per day, that comes to 2300
patient encounters per year for a 40
hour-per-week, in-house, employed
adult psychiatrist.
 $235,711 divided by 2300 comes to
$102.48 per patient encounter.


Telemedicine Doctors:
 Ifyou consider that on average we see
a patient every 30 minutes, then
working 4286.8 hours in 2011 came out
to 8774 patient encounters for a total of
$810,206.30.
 The resulting cost per patient encounter
was approximately $92.00 for a patient
seen by one of our telemedicine
doctors.

Analysis Results:
A Telemedicine doctor costs
you $92.00 per patient
encounter compared with
$102.48 per patient encounter
for an employed adult
psychiatrist.


Cost containment:
Ten dollars savings per
encounter adds up very quickly
when you consider the total
number of patient encounters
per year.
But the savings don’t stop
there…


Reduced risk of Liability and
associated costs:

 Compare the risks and liability of an
in-house doctor to a telemedicine
doctor contracted through
American Telepsychiatrists.*

*Remember, not all telepsychiatry companies are created
equal.


We cannot be hurt in your
facility.
We cannot file worker’s comp
claims.
We cannot physically touch a
patient, and therefore we
cannot have patient
complaints regarding physical
misconduct.


We cannot be physically
attacked by patients.
We do not get paid for
maternity/paternity leave.
We are not restricted from
working based on bad weather
or traffic conditions.


 We do not get involved in in-house
personality conflicts with other staff
members.
 We do not turn away walk-in, stand-
by, or late-arriving patients.
 We strive to spend quality time with
each patient rather than rushing
them out the door.


 We can usually replace an ill doctor
within minutes, and therefore we do
not require patient cancellations due
to physician illness.
 We cover our own doctors with
regards to vacations and sick
leave, and therefore we do not
require in-house doctors to pick up
the slack or the county to hire
expensive locum tenens doctors.


 We do not cost the system years of
retirement benefits long after we stop
seeing patients.
 We do not cost anything for healthcare.
 You do not have to spend money
recruiting us or moving us physically to
your county.
 Once we know your system, we train
any replacement Telepsychiatrists. You
need only train a doctor once. We do
the rest.

Simple Motivational
Psychology
 Doctors on salary get paid the same no
matter how many patients they see.
There is no incentive to see more patients
on any given day. A no-show is a gift of
free time to the doctor.
 Our telemedicine doctors only get paid if
a patient is seen. Telemedicine doctors
are motivated to see walk-in, stand-
by, and late arriving patients. They do not
need to be rescheduled.


Logical Conclusion?
When you look at the big
picture, there are exceptional
advantages to using our fee-
for-service telemedicine
services when compared to
using employed physicians.


How does American
Telepsychiatrists differ from
other telepsychiatry
companies?


 We use Board Certified Psychiatrists (most
companies do not do this as a policy).
 We supply 24/7 IT support to our doctors.
 If one doctor’s system goes down, we
can usually have another doctor in the
chair within 30 minutes.
 We have Psych Certified RNs supporting
our psychiatrists and available as liaison
between your patients and our doctors.
 We have staff available to call patients to
remind them of their appointments.


 American Telepsychiatrists is owned by a
Board Certified Child/Adolescent & Adult
Psychiatrist who understands the medical
ins and outs of public and private
psychiatric care facilities and who
actively works in these facilities as a
telepsychiatrist (most other companies
are owned by former
therapists, psychologists, or by business
people who have no medical knowledge
what-so-ever).


 We call patients back between
scheduled visits (most companies put you
off until the next time the doctor is in the
chair).
 Our prices include reasonable telephone
and email interaction throughout the
week to address medication
questions, refills, lab results, etc. (most
other companies don’t even order labs in
the first place).
 We are committed to continuity of care
(most other companies change doctors
frequently).


 Our mission is to provide services to the
underserved. We intentionally seek out
and hire doctors with an attitude toward
public service (most other companies find
doctors who are in it for the money and
who want to rush 5 or 6 patients through
in an hour in order to bill out that many
90862 billing codes). We take 60 minutes
to do an initial eval and 30 minutes for a
follow-up.


Chose
American
Telepsychiatrists
for all of your
telepsychiatry
needs.
Click to Contact

Financial Advantages of Telepsychiatry

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