"Medical Practice Marketing is far more
important to your medical practice productivity,
profitability, efficiency, and success than
your personal intelligence level."
You can’t fix “stupid!” Only a blundering idiot intoxicated with the fumes of depression would deny they want their medical practice to bring in more income than your CPA tells you that you’re earning now. By simply reading the AMA’s past Socioeconomic Characteristics of Medical Practice, 1986, as old as it is, should provoke a soul-sucking compelling truth in the mind of every physician to make practice marketing their medical practice priority now… not later.
What you’re going to find here is an understanding of how it is... not how you hope it is, relative to private medical practice. Ever wonder why the large marketing groups stay away from physicians? Because well informed marketers are well aware of the inability of physicians to keep their hard earned money and invest wisely. They go after the affluent segment of our society, which physicians in general aren’t. Does that surprise you… physicians as a group, are not affluent?
The sobering thought that only 1 in 10 physicians in this country will ever become a millionaire compared to 1 in 4 of the McDonald’s franchisees who are millionaires, may be a rude awakening for you. And some of these franchisees never got past high school. You physicians deserve to have higher incomes than you have now. You’ve already paid the price for affluence. Do you have it yet?
Knowledge can take you to a destination.
Inspiration can take you anywhere.
----Entrepreneur Magazine--Jan. 2014
Let’s get into the reasons to take the time to jump full-blast into marketing your own practice in one way or another...
1. Financial Education that you missed out on can be redeemed... yes, no one told you.
On the day you graduated from medical school did you have the financial where-with-all to start and run a small business, like a medical practice office, or to know how to hire effective productive employees? Only if you had had a business education under your belt.
Did you have any financial, academic, or experiential education on how to run a business successfully? I didn’t. So, we staggered around blindly using the trial and error business method. Wouldn’t it be nice to compensate for that lack of financial know-how? That’s what marketing strategies do for you and your practice.
2. Time Factor to attain what you are worth, may be too short...
You have only a short number of years to practice medicine and earn income. Physicians are in debt from the start... often in the range of $200,000. The new solo practice physician requires renting office space, paying employees, covering the overhead costs, and paying medical liability insurance, all of which are increasing relentlessly.
If it takes 2 to 4 years to build a practice income flow you can get by on, how long will it take to pay off all the huge educational debts shadowing you?
And after that you begin to accumulate net income for investing and funding the kids education. By my calculations you will be in your mid thirties before you even start to see that net income beginning to fill up your bank account.
I know… you join a group practice or HMO to avoid much of that. Even that may turn out to be way to restrictive for your creative talents, ambition, and lifestyle where the “group” decisions often may run your medical career life. It’s why I resigned from the HMO I had been working in for
3. Fact: Physicians who market their practice make considerably more money, fund their retirement plan, and pay for their kids college education
Physicians who are actively marketing their practices (best example are plastic surgeons) on average in a lifetime of medical practice, make about twice the income of those who don’t.
Surgeons, radiologists, and invasive cardiologists, and surprisingly, dermatologists, have incomes significantly higher than any other physician categories (estimated to be 50 to 100 thousand dollars per year more) without marketing. You have the opportunity now, with the Internet as an ally, to catch up to them. Of course, you can change to the high-earning specialties to earn more.
Marketing your own medical practice is the key to leveling the “practice income” playing field… that is without having a second job, hiring your wife to manage your office, or asking God for
help (Deut. 8:18).
4. Tracking statistics shows clearly the decline in physician incomes since 1995...
Tracking Report No. 15 coming primarily from the Center
for Studying Health System Change (HSC), flatly states
what you don’t want to hear.
“Between 1995 and 2003, average physician net
income from the practice of medicine declined
about 8 percent after adjusting for inflation."
The average net incomes of practicing physicians
has essentially not improved since that time.
5. Business trends offer an opportunity to implement new goals...
Intelligent alert professionals with a desire to become successful learn to seek out oncoming trends in the changes occurring in their business. Physicians need to do the same. When you read such
things as…
----Decline in Physician’s Real Income Continues.
----Physician incomes fail to keep pace with inflation
(Medical Economics Survey 2003)
----Losing ground: Physician Income, 1995-2003.
Author note: For 2020 physician salary data from Medical Economics go to my book --
THE WOUNDED PHYSICIAN PROJECT
Does it raise the hair on the back of your neck... or have you already jumped on your horse and rode for the hills? To reinforce visually what you are facing right today, check this chart out...
"In economic theory, every business is
successful exactly to the extent
that it does something others cannot."
----Wall Street Journal Sept. 2014
6. Medical practice competition for patients will increase for you...
Since most all of the physicians who practice in your area are unlikely to attempt to market their practices, if it follows the pattern found in most communities, you will immediately have the upper hand when patients are looking for a doctor. YOU DO THE MARKETING.
Your name and stature will be widespread among patients who are repeatedly running into your name and reputation. And that sir... is credible over the top demonstration of one-ups-man-ship which certainly will be envied by other physicians. It’s a unique benefit of medical practice marketing!
You can’t beat the competition by standing still!
7. Simple understanding and knowledge of marketing can help guide your practice success...
... but not guarantee it, even if you never implement any form of marketing into your medical practice. You don’t need to whip the horses.
You can ride shotgun, learn the marketing principles and strategies, apply them in clever ways, and infect your practice with an acceleration virus. Then, when it becomes obvious how well those light bulb moments ignite your patient flow, you’ll have solid proof of your need for the real private medical practice marketing muscle.
Amateurism just doesn’t cut it. That’s because using the principles you have ferreted out of your knowledge of how to do your own “generic marketing” is like trying to describe colored noise. And, it works too slow, wastes time and energy, while you follow short paths that fall way short of the long trail of planned documented marketing strategies for medical doctors that work every time.
I don’t mind telling you that I hate to see physicians suffer business-wise when they refuse to see such a fantastic opportunity to improve their income, lifestyle, and family dreams. Do you need a jolt to disengage your inertia?
"Things which matter most must never be
at the mercy of things which matter least"
----Goethe
8. What are you working for?
You know and I know nothing in this world happens without money. Your education, food, home, clothing, entertainment, medical office, salaries, and the like are not possible without some
form of money.
Sure, your passion to treat and cure disease in patients is foremost in your thinking. That’s laudable, but without income to do it, your passionate nature will never be realized. Get a grip and break the winless and sacrificial cycle of the “comfort level” that has taken you hostage.
If you are not always uncomfortable about where your medical business is, then you are on the wrong track for going above the ordinary and mediocre medical practice income, not to mention shortchanging yourself on what you are truly capable of.
How would the infusion of additional practice income affect your patients? Would they be managed by a physician who was able to spend more on medical educational meetings to keep on the cutting edge of newer treatments, more on improving old and learning new operative procedures, more on improving your family relationships? Are you immune to these thoughts or they just don’t matter?
Comments...
I apologize if I have offended your intellectual integrity, not because I meant to intimidate you, not because what I say is biased to the core, not because you need to be whipped into doing the right thing, not because of what you’re doing in healthcare is not enough, but because I haven’t been able to explore the depth of what needs to be said to you about medical practice marketing your medical practice business.
----Professional Probe----
"This is what you call courage when it
comes to marketing your medical practice."
"If your entrepreneurial spirit doesn't enable you to pull yourself up out of the comfort zone, then all those self-restrictions you have placed on yourself over your lifetime will continue to hold you hostage. Do you want to know what you look like to me when you begin to feel how much your restrictions have prevented you from being the best physician you had the potential to be?"
Think about it.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #2, 3-16-22
