Business Operations for Women's Health Practices
Obstetrics and gynecology practices run differently than most medical specialties. You bill for care that spans trimesters. You credential providers for both office and hospital settings. You carry malpractice premiums that can exceed $150,000 per provider. The business side of OB/GYN requires understanding these realities.
SMCG works with OB/GYN practices on the operational and financial challenges specific to women's health. Whether you run a solo practice or a 20-provider group considering new service lines, we focus on the revenue, credentialing, staffing, and growth issues that affect obstetrics and gynecology practices.
OB/GYN Business Operations We Address
We work on the business challenges that affect gynecology practice revenue and growth. Bundled maternity billing, dual credentialing requirements, high overhead from malpractice premiums, and service line decisions all require approaches specific to obstetrics and gynecology.
Obstetric Billing and the Revenue Cycle
OB/GYN billing operates on global packages that bundle antepartum visits, delivery, and postpartum care into single payments. Payers handle these bundles differently. Some require specific modifier usage, others have different rules for high-risk pregnancies, and complications during delivery can change how the entire episode gets billed. Many practices lose revenue because billing staff don't understand the timing requirements for closing out maternity packages or miss billable services that fall outside the bundle. Our revenue cycle management team works on obstetric billing, including antepartum visit tracking, delivery code selection, and identifying services that should be billed separately.
Credentialing for Women's Health Providers
OB/GYN providers need credentials in more places than most specialists. Beyond commercial payer panels and Medicare enrollment, obstetricians need hospital privileges for labor and delivery, which involves separate medical staff applications and proctoring requirements. Adding a new OB to your practice means coordinating timelines across insurance credentialing and hospital privileging simultaneously. Delays in either one prevent the provider from seeing the full scope of patients. Our credentialing team tracks both insurance enrollment and hospital privileging applications, coordinating timelines so new providers can see patients and deliver babies as quickly as possible.
Financial Management for Gynecology Practices
OB/GYN practices carry higher fixed costs than most specialties. Malpractice premiums for obstetrics are among the highest in medicine, sometimes exceeding $150,000 per provider annually depending on location and claims history. Equipment costs for ultrasound, fetal monitoring, and in-office procedures add to overhead. Our financial management team helps gynecology practices develop budgets that account for these realities. We analyze your payer mix, review where surgical revenue versus office visit revenue falls short of expectations, and help you understand whether adding providers or services will improve profitability given your current cost structure.
Expanding Women's Health Service Lines
Many OB/GYN practices consider expanding into fertility services, menopausal care programs, minimally invasive surgery, or aesthetic gynecology. Each expansion requires different equipment investments, staffing changes, credentialing updates, and marketing approaches. Adding fertility services means IVF lab partnerships or in-house capabilities. Expanding surgical volume requires OR block time negotiations and potentially ASC investment. Our operations team helps women's health practices evaluate service line options, develop financial projections, and plan implementations that account for the operational requirements of each service.
Marketing for OB/GYN Practices
OB/GYN practices compete for patients at multiple life stages. Younger patients choosing an OB for pregnancy, women seeking gynecological care, patients considering surgical options, and those entering menopause all have different concerns and search for providers differently. Your practice needs to communicate what differentiates your care at each stage. Our marketing team helps OB/GYN practices develop positioning that addresses patient concerns across the women's health continuum, from prenatal care to surgical expertise to menopause management.
How SMCG Approaches OB/GYN Consulting
What Most Practices Experience
Generic healthcare consulting that ignores OB/GYN realities. Revenue cycle advice from companies that don't understand bundled maternity billing. Credentialing services that miss the hospital privileging coordination required for obstetrics. Financial planning using benchmarks from specialties with lower malpractice costs and different revenue patterns. Growth recommendations that don't account for the equipment, staffing, and credentialing requirements of expanding women's health services.
How SMCG Works
We start by understanding your current operations. Before making recommendations, we review your actual numbers: what percentage of maternity packages are closing correctly, where revenue leakage occurs in obstetric billing, how long credentialing and privileging applications are taking, what your real overhead percentages look like given malpractice and equipment costs. Our recommendations account for OB/GYN economics and operational requirements. We don't suggest approaches that work for primary care but fail in obstetrics and gynecology.
OB/GYN Practice Results
Research published in the National Library of Medicine shows that nearly 83% of OB/GYN physicians will face at least one malpractice lawsuit during their careers. Combined with bundled billing that spans months of care and credentialing requirements across office and hospital settings, the business side of obstetrics and gynecology requires approaches most healthcare consultants don't offer.
SMCG helps OB/GYN practices address the business operations that affect revenue and growth. Our revenue cycle team understands obstetric billing and can identify where your practice loses money in the billing process. Our credentialing team coordinates insurance enrollment with hospital privileging to reduce the time before new providers generate full revenue. Our financial consultants help practices understand whether service line expansions make sense given current overhead and payer mix.
These business improvements apply whether you run a two-physician OB/GYN practice or a 15-provider women's health group. The principles remain consistent. We adjust implementation to match your practice size, delivery volume, surgical mix, and staffing model. A smaller practice might focus on obstetric billing accuracy and credentialing speed. A larger group might prioritize service line expansion planning and financial modeling for growth. We help you determine what makes sense for your situation.
Ready to Talk About Your Practice?
Connect with SMCG to discuss your current revenue cycle challenges, credentialing timelines, service line questions, or financial planning needs. Our consultation focuses on your specific business situation, not generic advice that ignores OB/GYN operational realities.
Schedule a Consultation
Connect with us and discover how our services can help your OB/GYN practice address the business operations challenges specific to obstetrics and gynecology.
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