Compensation Analysis and Fair Market Value (FMV) for OBLS

By: Bri Driggers and Juan Arredondo

In the online webinar, Compensation Analysis and Fair Market Value (FMV), Regents Executive Vice Presidents Raif Erim and Sheila Sferrella, along with RCCS President Melody W. Mulaik, provided their unique perspectives on the pros and cons of Outpatient-Based Labs (OBL) for interventional services.

Raif and Sheila are top experts on setting up outpatient facilities and ensuring efficiency. The webinar pointed out important points whenever considering OBLs that could be deciding factors for your healthcare practice. If you are considering an outpatient-based IR Lab or are curious about them, we invite you to read our five-part webinar series.

Compensation Analysis and Fair Market Value For OBLS

Understanding OBLs
Considering an OBL can be beneficial for different areas of your practice such as access, revenue, and clinical labor. The revenue for interventional procedures continues to decrease every year, while the cost of providing these services continues to increase.
Healthcare providers must consider the cost and benefit of providing quality service that is expected. When determining the total cost, you must consider recruiting, operations, and salary. Recruiting for smaller hospitals has become extremely difficult because, as an example, many interventional radiologists prefer to only perform interventional radiology procedures. 

This may not be supported by a smaller hospital, whose volume of radiology patients may balance between both interventional and diagnostic procedures. An OBL can relieve some of the pressure on hospitals by treating less traumatic instances with outpatient procedures.

What to do if you are considering an OBL?
Fair market valuations can help hospitals and physician groups determine why additional support may be needed, understand where the revenue shortage originates, and provide additional support on why an OBL might be beneficial. They also consider state regulations and barriers of entry like competitors, coms, and level of competition that are often ignored. These are all factors to consider when determining whether a subsidy is needed to provide interventional radiology services.

The webinar mentions that success in staffing an OBL comes from using real data and benchmarks that could provide realistic data on why an OBL could be beneficial for a healthcare organization. Working with a third-party evaluation firm can provide real data that is unique to your business and comparisons with national benchmarks to help you locate where the best value is. A fair market valuation helps you understand the value of your service and empowers you to negotiate from a position of strength using real data. Understanding the value of the service you provide, and the replacement cost can help you make the best decision for your practice, even if that means walking away from a potential revenue source due to the cost of providing a service.