Ancillary services can make a significant contribution to your medical practice’s income, and represent an opportunity to better serve your patients by meeting otherwise unmet needs.

As one of our members pointed out, you need to be sure that any ancillary service makes sense for your practice – you don’t offer Botox injections in a pediatric practice, and if you are a hospitalist, your options may be limited by your contract.

Nevertheless, there are a number of possible ancillary services that may be a good fit with your practice, depending on your specialty. If these represent services that you would otherwise refer out that make sense to provide in your own office, you should consider whether this represents an opportunity to better serve your patients and bring additional revenue to your practice:

• Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring
• Audiology services
• Bone density testing
• Botox injections
• Clinical trials
• Counseling services
• Dispensing drugs
• EKG tests
• Flexible sigmoidoscopy
• Holter monitoring
• Laser hair removal
• Weight loss/nutritional counseling
• Physical therapy
• Radiology services
• Spirometry
• Tobacco cessation
• Waived lab services

Physical therapy may make sense as an adjunct to a pain management practice, while Botox and bone density testing may be a better fit for a primary care physician or OB/GYN practice.

As long as you are offering a service that you would otherwise need to refer out and are careful to avoid running afoul of the Stark laws, you will be doing well by doing right by your patients.

Medical Economics ran a series of articles covering each of these ancillary services.