Medical Practice Consultants or Health Care Management Consultants typically provide business and administrative advice to licensed healthcare providers and health systems, but not clinical advice.
Should you start your own practice and be an entrepreneur, or should you work in a hospital? For some doctors, the answer is obvious: you want to start your own practice. You want more power to make decisions that will allow you to provide better care to your patients.
Starting a medical practice can be the most rewarding endeavor you have ever undertaken, but it can also be extremely difficult. The following are some of the most common mistakes that physicians make when entering private practice.
1. When Beginning a Practice, Time is of the Essence
Starting a practice should begin long before a physician completes his or her residency or decides to leave the employ of a hospital or another group. Do not place yourself in a hurry. Regardless of how eager you are to get your practice up and running, you will need to rely on the assistance of others – lawyers, real estate agents, and so on – who will most likely not share your sense of urgency. If you don’t have 6 months to devote to starting your practice, you risk having to see patients for free if you want to participate with third-party payers.
If you want to start a concierge practice, the time-consuming credentialing process will not slow you down, but you will still have to deal with multiple people and organizations (real estate, construction, lenders, technology, communications, and so on) to get the job done. Your MBA Advisor is both your advocate and your watchdog, ensuring that everyone completes the actions they promised to complete in a timely manner.
The credentialing process takes at least 6 months. Give yourself four months if you don’t have any credentials.
2. Display the Money
There aren’t many people, including doctors, who can start a new business without the help of a lender. Undercapitalization is the leading cause of business failure. Assume, then, that you will get to know your lender. You should all be working toward the same goal. Too little money can sink a ship, but too much money can put you in jeopardy. Creating a financial ProForma is critical not only for constructing the numbers but also for making early decisions about how the practice will operate. What services will you provide, how much space will you require, how do you want the space to be configured, what payer mix will you have, how much will your EHR/PM cost, what about marketing, and so on?
Calculate your revenue expectations to the nearest dollar amount and then list all expenses. Divide the expenses into what you’ll need before you open the doors, what you’ll need after you open the doors, and operating expenses for the first year, which should include equipment and subject matter expertise (lawyer, accountant, medical business advisor). Make projections of the worst, most likely, and best-case scenarios. Compile your last two years’ tax returns and create a Personal Financial Statement. After that, you’ll be ready to go to the bank.
3. Slowly hire, quickly fire
Recruiting and hiring are both skills. Get assistance to ensure that you hire highly motivated employees who are as invested as you are. Do not hire someone unless you are confident that they are a cultural fit and can understand, demonstrate, and abide by your vision and values 100 percent of the time. Hire staff who can keep up with you if you’re going to be in a fast-paced practice. Hiring the wrong people can be extremely costly when you consider how much time and money they will need to learn your IT systems, equipment, and workflow processes.
More importantly, surrounding yourself with the right people will improve both your and your patients’ experiences. It is never a good idea to hold a subpar employee’s hand. Consider the “opportunity cost” of such behavior. You’d have the “opportunity” to spend more time with your patients, family, or doing anything else you’d like if you didn’t have to spend time with them.
4. The Technology Hunt (EHR/PM)
When it comes to healthcare technology, these are exciting times. It’s reassuring to know that we’re on the right track when it comes to improving the quality of patient care and the patient experience through the use of technology. Healthcare has gotten over the hump of realizing that the electronic health record (EHR) is a necessary component of achieving these improvements. The good news is that you’ve probably already used an EHR for the first time. The next step in preparing to begin practice is to select the one that works best for you and meets all requirements.
Don’t undervalue the importance of what’s going on in the community where your practice will be located. Determine whether or not an EHR is widely used in your area. You’ll probably discover that many products are still in use in a specific geographic area. However, in terms of future planning, interoperability, reporting, usability, and patient engagement are all critical.
Your choice of a Practice Management (PM) system is intertwined with your EHR decision. Whether one vendor hosts the EHR and another host the PM system, or you host both within your medical practice, they must communicate electronically. Ascertain that electronic communication is seamless.
5. Medicine is a Commercial Enterprise
It used to be that saying “medicine is business” felt extremely out of place. Even today, it may elicit a few odd looks. Medicine remained medicine, and business remained business. Medicine is now, without a doubt, a business. What does this mean for physicians who have spent years preparing to provide results-driven care? When it comes to starting their own practice, they are usually behind the eight-ball. Do not be afraid to collaborate and collaborate with a healthcare business expert. A healthcare business expert, not just a business expert.
The healthcare industry is a beast unto itself. Hire a medical practice consulting service to help you slay the beast. We will devote the time, energy, expertise, and patience that this process necessitates. We will also bask in the satisfaction you will feel when you successfully launch your practice.
