Report from Robert Half International Inc. Could Spell Further Growth for Staffing Industry

Who would have known that a single company could comprise an economic indicator? Staffing giant, Robert Half International Inc., posted earnings and revenues for a successful second quarter, which ended on June 30, 2012. Here’s what their success means for your staffing firm and for future employment figures nationwide:

It means we can expect growth in all aspects of staffing. According to Harold M. Messmer, Jr., Robert Half International’s chairman and CEO, “Demand for our specialized staffing and consulting services remained strong during the quarter, particularly in our U.S. staffing operations, which grew 17 percent versus the prior year.”

Robert Half International is composed of a variety of staffing divisions, all of which are experiencing growth. According to a report from DailyMarkets.com, “The company’s specialized staffing divisions include Finance & Accounting staffing, Management Resources staffing, administrative office staffing (back office), IT staffing, legal personnel staffing, and creative staffing, for “interactive, design, marketing, advertising and public relations professionals.”

Click here for more information: Robert Half International Reports Second-Quarter Financial Results

Swipe Fees Threaten Merchant-Customer Relationships Nationwide

Did any of the small business owners who regularly read The Factoring Blog see the article in The Wall Street Journal today, entitled: The Swipe Fee Conundrum?

We thought our small business factoring readers and Americans everywhere should be concerned about a recent court settlement against major credit card companies that may open “the way for millions of businesses to add checkout fees when customers pay with plastic.”

This surcharge comes as the result of 1-3% charges burdened on businesses by credit card companies. This fee may be passed on to customers, who may remain entirely unaware that they are being charged extra for credit card companies’ profit.

Of course, though most business owners would rather be transparent in dealing with swipe fees, “many don’t want to run the risk of alienating credit-card users” by exposing swipe fees to the public.

The fees, which have been deemed by merchants and customers alike as “petty” is undermining the relationships that business owners have with their clientele, as well as the hard-won credibility that make those relationships work.

According to this article in The Wall Street Journal, “The proposed settlement sets aside $6.05 billion,” and “the biggest portion of the money will likely go to large retailers.”

Small business owners may be fortunate to even receive several hundred dollars from the settlement, making this lawsuit a purely corporate affair.

Per Reuters, Expect Further Dips in Job Creation

Bad news from Reuters: Fewer U.S. companies planning to hire in the near future.

The title says it all, but the statistics are even more revealing. A mere 23 percent of companies polled by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) in June have definite plans to hire additional staff within the coming six months. Hiring has reached a dramatic slowdown in the past few months, due to the mounting debt crisis in the Eurozone.

Still, March and April’s numbers are significantly higher than May through July’s. Forty-seven percent of companies that took part in the survey responded with the feeling that the European crisis precipitated their difficulties in sales.

What is most startling is that 40 percent of these firms have more than 1,000 employees. When big hirers stop hiring, what about the small ones?

More and more companies have stopped hiring full-time. Now, more than ever, is the time for temporary staffing companies to sell their services. Temporary staffing can allow companies to test the waters with temporary workers rather than committing to full time relationships.

Keep in mind that while you’re expanding and cultvating your temporary staffing agency, there is no reason why you should fall behind the curve because of delinquent invoices. Try temporary staffing factoring so that you ca better accommodate the demands of your industry.

Employment Trends Index Takes a Dip in June

Here’s some news we thought would be helpful for any of our temporary staffing invoice factoring readers:

Who would have thought that the summertime blues could refer to job growth? Though the U.S. economy is not hemorrhaging jobs like it did a few years ago, the rate of growth has stalled in recent months.

According to this press release, “The Conference Board Employment Trends IndexTM (ETI) dipped to 107.47 in June.” Though this number is 5.6 percent higher than June of last year, and 19.54 percent higher than three years ago, it marks a fall from May’s number, 108.23.

The drop was caused by negative developments in four of eight categories that comprise the index. Three of these components are listed in the article:

1. The “Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers”
2. “Percentage of Firms with Positions Not Able to be Filled Right Now”
3. “Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance”
4. Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find Jobs “Hard to Get.”

The other four categories that are weighted towards the Employment Trends Index include:

1. Number of employees hired by the Temporary Help Industry
2. Job Openings
3. Real manufacturing and Trade Sales
4. Industrial Production.

Supreme Court Stuns Nation with Obamacare Decision

The outcome appeared uncertain, but in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to be constitutional in accordance with U.S. tax laws.

Chief Justice John Roberts opined that the individual mandate, the clause compelling all Americans to own some sort of health insurance, was unconstitutional if the penalty took the form of a fine. Instead, if

Americans decided not to follow the individual mandate, they would be taxed in accordance with the burden that any potential uninsured illnesses might pose to taxpayers.

Though, prior to signing the bill into law in March 2010, the president had vehemently denied the bill to be a tax, his wording was corrected by the court on Thursday June 28, 2012.

Beyond compelling Americans to purchase policies from healthcare insurance companies, the bill also limits insurance companies’ rights to severability. The PPACA holds that no insurance company can terminate coverage because of a person’s pre-existing condition.

Limitations upon the rights of private sector insurance firms are subsequently countered by the bill’s expansion of Medicaid. The federal government has offered to fund the expansion in every state, to the tune of 100% of the cost.

The act, pejoratively known as Obamacare, has a host of pros and cons that will be sure to affect the well-being of each and every American. It is unforeseeable how our small business, healthcare factoring clientele will be affected, but we will keep you posted as new information becomes available.

The Future and Foundations of Medical Transcription

There was an interesting article in For The Record Magazine last month that the medical transcription factoring specialists at PRN Funding wanted to share with our medical transcription readers–Utterly Essential. Keep reading for a brief overview of the article:

Could it be that the old way of doing things is more effective than the new? When it comes to medical transcription, many doctors still stress the benefits of dictation for providing patient care that is at once more personal, nuanced and efficient.

In his 2007 article in Family Practice Management, David E. Trachtenbarg, MD shared that “clicking or typing text multiple times is generally slower than dictating…Using discrete data, it took me 95 seconds to complete 17 clicks for yes-or-no questions, five text boxes that required typing and two drop-down lists. In contrast, it took me 41 seconds to document the same history using dictation.”

Furthermore, Jason Mitchell, MD, was quoted in Utterly Essential as saying that dictation can “capture nuances and subtleties that cannot be communicated strictly through EHR fields.”

While dictation certainly makes relationships between individual patients and doctors more personal, meaningful, and effective; in the grand scheme of data collection, the tape recorder certainly has its shortcomings. Even with burgeoning vocal-recognition technology like Apple’s “Siri,” harvesting, codifying and putting dictated notes to good use is a process that presents many challenges to the health information industry.

After all, EHR has many benefits. Though it has been criticized for turning highly-paid doctors into data-entry clerks, medical practices are experimenting with cost-effective methods of implementing the process.

One method-which is rapidly becoming dated-involves a scribe whose job is to communicate with the physician and record the finer points of the patient’s case. This allows the doctor more time to see more patients.

Though it would seem to make sense to have nurses act as scribes, Jason Mitchell, MD, argues otherwise. Mitchell, who acts as the assistant director of the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Center for Health IT, believes it to be “more cost-effective to bring someone in on a lower pay scale.”

According to For the Record, Mitchell goes on to assert that “as software becomes more developed… the scribe’s role will eventually become obsolete.”

What does this mean for our medical transcription factoring clientele? It means that the future of EHR has to incorporate, in some meaningful way, the efficient, interpersonal process of dictation. Software must be developed that can enter dictation into EHR, codify it for future diagnostic purposes, and save it for the physician’s use.

By improving the process of extracting discrete data from patients’ narratives, the combined forces of dictation and EHR could save lives in both the present and the future, using all of the methods and information from the healthcare industry’s past.

Social Media for the Mind and Body – Jiff Reveals ‘Circle of Life’

If you can believe it, there is now a social network devoted to the collective wellness of healthcare consumers. Members of Jiff Inc.’s new platform, Circle of Health, will be able to embed a profile at the center of their very own network of friends, family, doctors, nurses, and insurance agents.

According to last month’s edition of the health information magazine, For the Record, Circle of Health (a HIPAA-approved service) will allow consumers to “share medical documents, videos, and information useful to managing health and wellness” with a network of three to fifteen people. This limited size will allow for greater privacy, facilitating simpler interactions among members of each network. Furthermore, Jiff is pushing to further simplify their platform by constructing an array of applications for member use.

The service may prove revolutionary, says Jiff CEO Derek Newell: “To date, healthcare has been communicated only on paper and through phone calls and office visits. This is a $2.7 trillion industry without an effective way for physicians to communicate and effectively keep track of the patient’s progress between office visits. Circle of Health changes that.”

Our medical transcription factoring clientele can find out more about this service on Circle of Health’s website.

Invoice Factoring Case Study: Outsourced Medical Billing Company

The outsourced medical billing factoring specialists at PRN Funding wanted to share one of our more recent invoice funding case studies with the medical billing company owners that read The Factoring Blog:

David had aspirations of entrepreneurship ever since he graduated college. Due to the ever-increasing demand for health care, he spotted an opportunity to start his own medical billing company. As word quickly spread about the company’s unparalleled customer service, David’s start-up medical billing company began getting more calls and business soared. As a result, David needed to hire more medical billing specialists to handle the new demand. Because his customers took about 45 days to pay him for his medical billing services, David realized that he would not have enough readily available cash on hand to pay his employees on time. As a result, David began researching financing options. Unfortunately, because David’s company was relatively new, the bank he initially approached turned him down.

Medical Billing Factoring

David didn’t know what to do. He called his friend Steve, who is a broker for alternative financing companies. Steve informed David about accounts receivable factoring, which would help him stabilize his cash flow through the company’s growth period. Steve referred David to PRN Funding, LLC, who has a dedicated medical billing factoring program.

Home Healthcare Factoring: The Right Funding Solution for Your Home Health Care Agency

Instead of waiting weeks or months to receive payments from Medicaid, Medicare, insurance companies and/or private consumers, would your home health care agency rather have your cash immediately? Did a bank recently turn down your business loan application? Are your home health care receivables available to be collateralized?

If you answered ‘yes’ to one or all of the questions above, then home health care agency invoice financing is by far the best funding option for your business. Allow me to elaborate…

Home health care invoice funding is the conversion of accounts receivable into cash by selling outstanding invoices to a factoring firm. Home healthcare agency financing is a viable financial solution that gives companies immediate cash to manage operations more efficiently. Home health care care agency owners can then use liquid capital to make payroll, pay taxes and meet other recurring financial obligations.

Click here for some additional key concepts about home healthcare agency invoice funding.

Health Care Staffing Factoring Helps Business Owners Expand Agencies

Health care staffing factoring is beneficial for growing agencies struggling to make payroll while their clients (medical providers) take weeks or months to pay for their services. Oftentimes, these agencies can’t qualify for traditional financing because banks look at a company’s past-aka: a profitable operating history-in order to extend credit. However, medical staffing funding companies are more concerned with the agency’s future-aka: its growing accounts receivable-in order to extend credit. Let’s take a look at how one healthcare staffing agency used invoice factoring to improve its cash flow.

Slow Payments Hinder an Agency’s Growth
A new healthcare staffing agency was successfully staffing LPNs and CNAs at a handful of local hospitals. Since the company’s inception six months ago, it had gained an outstanding reputation for placing the most qualified and hard-working nurses. Even though the healthcare staffing agency was a popular choice, the owner kept turning down new clients because he was struggling to make payroll and pay taxes. Simply put, payments coming in were much slower than the agency owner had originally anticipated, and his cash flow was out of sorts.

Click here to find out how the health care staffing agency owner used invoice funding to help stabilize his cash flow.

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