A south-central Ontario group practice did some reorganizing and realized they had an 800-square-foot surplus of office space. They’d already committed to a mortgage on the building, and finding a new doctor to join their group was proving difficult. What to do?

The answer, provided by Practice Solutions consultant Jim Sweeney, was to rent out the surplus office space to other health professionals — in this case, a team of physiotherapists. “This was a win-win opportunity,” says Sweeney, a 37-year veteran of practice management consulting. The group practice got rid of the drag on their finances, while the physiotherapists got access to an office that was already set up for patients.

Renting out extra office space (or even your own office space during hours it goes unused) to ancillary medical services providers or to other doctors, is one of the most effective ways to maximize your practice’s revenue, says Sweeney.

For most physicians, expenses are already as low as they can reasonably go. Unless your staffers are earning outrageous salaries or your waiting room is so lavish that patients just come in to relax, you probably don’t have much fat to trim. That’s why if you want to offset your overhead you’ll have to look at maximizing your revenue, either via new sources (like renting out unused office space) or through existing channels. The most fruitful thing you can do with your existing revenue stream, says Sweeney, is to optimize your billing.

One way to do that is to make sure your practice is actually submitting claims for all the patients you see, and make sure those claims are going through as intended. He estimates that the average physician misses out on $10-20,000 per year. The solution, he explains, is to use an appointment scheduler software program attached to your billing software, and to use a function called “aged accounts receivable” to audit yourself. “I tell doctors, when they print [the billing report] out they may want another physician and a crash cart on hand.”

Another billing boost is to charge for uninsured services you provide, like filling out private-insurance forms. If you feel uncomfortable asking patients to pay you directly, hire a billing firm to collect for you.

There are other ways to maximize your revenue, of course. You could buy an x-ray machine or start your own blood lab. Or improve your efficiency at getting patients in and out: hire a nurse practitioner, for instance, or add extra exam rooms and rotate between them. But renting unused office space and auditing your billing are the easiest, fastest ways to give your revenue a shot in the arm.