Consider a Cost-Effective and HIPAA-Compliant VoIP Phone System
It’s not just the price of eggs that’s rising – of the nearly 400 items tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 73 percent increased in price between January 2024 and January 2025. Medical practices aren’t exempt from rising costs. The cost of operating a practice has climbed 60 percent, and 92 percent of medical group leaders report that their operating expenses have increased.
As if that wasn’t enough to cause concern for healthcare practices of all sizes, recent news that President Trump endorsed a House budget blueprint calling for the Energy and Commerce Committee to slash spending by $880 billion over 10 years. A big chunk of this proposed spending decrease would result from major Medicaid reform. Other portions of Trump’s order to reduce U.S. healthcare spending consist of accessing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) payment systems, limiting administrative funds as part of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and offering buyouts to 2.3 million federal employees.
On February 13, the Trump administration ordered the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to fire roughly 5,200 probationary employees, including 10 percent of the workforce at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and 1,500 workers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which employs 21 percent of the federal workforce, has dismissed more than 1,000 newly hired employees, including nurses, doctors and others.
Critics worry that cutting healthcare personnel could exacerbate staffing shortages and strain the system. Many U.S. healthcare consumers want the U.S. government to spend more—not less—on Medicare and Medicaid. According to a KFF poll, 51 percent of Americans say the federal government spends “not enough” on Medicare, and approximately 46 percent say the same about the Medicaid program.
Potential Repercussions of the Proposed Healthcare Cuts
Rural hospitals and healthcare providers might be most affected by the proposed legislation because the national median operating margin for rural hospitals is one percent, and 46 percent of rural hospitals have a negative operating margin. In 2024, 18 rural hospitals closed or converted to an operating model that excludes inpatient care. A lack of adequate government reimbursement would likely result in the closure of more rural hospitals, their services, and physician practices.
Medicaid supports 80 million low-income people—including 40 percent of children—in the U.S., accounting for one-sixth of all healthcare spending. Cutting Medicaid funds and imposing state work requirements on its recipients could eliminate coverage for millions of Americans and impact the quality of care by causing marked financial strain on hospitals and other healthcare providers. An article published in the Journal of Surgical Research noted that healthcare providers relying heavily on government payor reimbursement remain at serious risk of financial distress in 2025.
Since January 1, physicians have been paid 2.83 percent less than they were in 2024 for the services they provide their Medicare patients, marking the fifth consecutive year of Medicare physician payment cuts for physicians. An American Medical Association (AMA) analysis of data from the Medicare Trustees Report and the Federal Register suggests that payments increased by seven percent between 2001 and 2025. Still, the cost of running a medical practice increased by a whopping 59 percent.
Smaller healthcare practices are more likely to feel the brunt of such drastic decreases in reimbursement. Medical groups and solo practices already encounter a plethora of challenges, including:
- Administrative burden
- Staffing shortages
- Rising healthcare technology costs
- Compliance with multiple healthcare regulations
- Patient acquisition and retention
- Growing labor costs
- Demand and access issues
- Lower bargaining power with insurers
- Limited resources and infrastructure
- Higher fees for rent, utilities, office supplies, training and advertising
Add to those increasing practice operating costs we mentioned earlier in this post, and it’s a recipe for substantial financial stress. A recently released report from AMGA found that operating expense increases outpaced revenue gains in 2024.
Some expenses are unavoidable—more than 35 percent of medical groups are budgeting more than usual for staff cost-of-living and merit increases. Labor costs, especially from physicians, account for 84 percent of medical groups’ expenses, with subsidies per physician exceeding $300,000. Total expenses per full-time provider hit $645,530 in 2024.
Healthcare Practices: Doing More with Less
What could cause even more angst for medical practices facing economic uncertainty in 2025? The American Hospital Association (HA) predicts an estimated shortage of up to 3.2 million U.S. healthcare workers will occur by 2026. Almost 80 percent of physicians say staff shortages and/or poor healthcare staff retention negatively impact their organization.
Cutting operating costs to address declining reimbursement doesn’t mean medical practices have to forego components necessary for a successful operation, one of which is efficient communication. Maintaining continuous and effective patient communication is crucial to a well-run practice, improving health outcomes, patient satisfaction and engagement and reducing medication errors and hospital admissions.
Evidence indicatesstrong positive relationships between a healthcare team member’s communication skills and a patient’s capacity to follow medical recommendations, self-manage a chronic medical condition and adopt preventive health behaviors.
Some healthcare practices encounter lapses in internal communication, negatively impacting various administrative tasks. Communication inefficiencies in medical groups can occur when poor call quality and cumbersome call handling lead to patient and staff frustrations. Sometimes, the problem is a practice’s phone system’s lack of integration with the other technology tools it has implemented.
There are affordable, secure and uncomplicated ways to improve communication, streamline task management and promote better team collaboration in medical groups. HIPAA-compliant phone systems, for example, address their unique operational needs, resulting in efficient call management, secure communication, and enhanced patient engagement. These tools can also alleviate some administrative responsibilities that drive burnout, allowing clinicians to spend more time with their patients.
A cost-effective resource for boosting the efficiency of any practice’s communication is a HIPAA-compliant voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) phone system. Unlike traditional landlines, which rely on outdated hardware and infrastructure, VoIP operates over the Internet and enables practice staff to communicate from any device with an Internet connection, including computers, phones and tablets.
VoIP phone systems are well-suited for small and medium-sized practices because they allow physicians to make calls conveniently and securely from their smartphones or laptops. Practice staff can use desk phones, existing mobile phones or both. Such systems rely on the cloud rather than on-site hardware, which must be regularly maintained and upgraded.
Leading VoIP phone systems are highly adaptable and designed to integrate seamlessly with other healthcare IT systems. They offer more modern features and capabilities, such as e-faxing, after-hours call routing, API customization, call queues and spam-protection technology, all through on-demand access to services on a pay-as-you-go model.
Cost-Effectively Boost Your Healthcare Practice Communication with RingRx
The RingRx feature-rich, enterprise-class phone system was built for healthcare and provides medical practices of all sizes with advanced call management capabilities. You can save time and cut costs by implementing voice, text and fax in one solution — our communication system that easily integrates with existing solutions, including analog hospital room phones, overhead paging systems, nurse call bell systems and more.
In addition to a quick setup, the RingRx platform offers scalability, allowing you to keep your communications framework streamlined, whether you have two, three or ten locations. It simplifies communications with easy-to-use scheduling and automation tools that enhance your relationship with your patients. Sign up today for our free 14-day trial!
