"Here's how to set a business system up that
will upgrade your practice profitability 500%"
The reason why most physicians, and you, in private medical practice have been forced to seek out the old-fashioned hand-me-down, trial and error techniques you now rely in part on to improve your practice income is none other than sheer desperation from business ignorance. It’s not
your fault.
It’s what the medical school education hierarchy for the last century put in place to ensure all medical students are taught so much medical knowledge, skills, and training that there is no significant need for them to learn how to make money. They obviously haven’t changed their minds.
This fallacy persists in the medical education system today despite the worldwide revolutionary changes and improvements in the economic and business systems required for success and survival in all other business entities, except for the business of medical practice. Why?
What are your survival instincts telling you?
What do most independent practicing physicians do today about earning enough income in clinical medical practice to not only satisfy their expectations for their medical careers, but also to provide for family obligations that increase over time?
Most physicians who continue to lose their medical practices for financial reasons never discover the alternatives and business tools available to them that, if applied properly, absolutely yank any physician out of his or her financial quicksand.
You read, listen, and think about all of the ubiquitous advice offered in medical practice financial and business literature, magazines, and books telling you to increase your medical practice business efficiency. In most cases these articles are written by physicians who have never had a business education or by CPAs or attorneys that have never had an academic business education.
The fact that most of these authors can easily tell you “What” to do and then never seem to tell you “How” to do what they advise, is ample evidence of their lack of a formal business education.
Some respond to that criticism by blaming publications that limit the length of their articles and they have no room left to tell you the “how” part. Others assume that the readers of their articles and advice will become so passionate about the author’s “what” advice that they will automatically take the time to follow through with a search of the literature to find the “how” details.
Usually, the author is someone that appears to be an expert in medical practice business either because they have managed their own medical practice business and are speaking from an experiential involvement in the topic or does not understand that most physicians will never take the time to do any researching for business knowledge if they can help it.
How is that working out for you?
Have you recognized that you find numerous articles and printed advice in print and digital resources that tell you what you need to do to avoid financial difficulties and stop there? Why would an author, especially when they are a physician, leave out the most important and applicable aspect of the business topic--how to do it?
Many authors of “help the doctor” articles are usually very slack in the “how” to do what they advise you because they strive to be published only.
If I listed the ten most common pieces of "what" advice I see in the literature today to help you to survive financially in medical practice, I would not need to tell you that you have already considered every one of those at least three times. These are most often good people giving you advice to help you but they have no clue about what it is that will actually be of benefit to you.
The problem is that 99% of those advisors themselves, claiming to know what you should do about increasing your income by business advice, don’t have a clue about what the top business experts know, that always work. The cutting edge that separates you (the readers of this article) from the real business information and advice is the result of what elite business experts and advisors call, “arrogance” of physician authors. Real business experts avoid medical doctors like the plague.
Many of these business experts have told me that they don’t care to waste their
time and advice on physicians for two primary reasons...
1. Private practice physicians don’t believe what the business
experts tell them to do.
2. Private practice physicians, those few who listen to the
business experts, rarely end up doing what the business
experts advise for one of many reasons.
- A few physicians try the recommended advice and expect the
strategy to work immediately, it doesn’t, so they quit. - Most of the time when contacted by business experts’ physicians
refuse to even make an appointment to talk. Why would most
physicians refuse to talk with a business expert? Because they
already know all they need to know about business management,
they think. It’s the epitome of arrogance. And it’s the primary cause
for the lack of income large numbers of physicians suffer with.
I equate that to your shooting yourself in the foot to perpetuate your arrogance. I used to be one of those physicians myself—and lost my practice because of my business ignorance.
The focus on improving office efficiency is a great starting point.
It’s something that you can do yourself, with your staff, and it’s not as difficult as it might seem. When someone asks you what you are doing to increase your office efficiency, what do you say in response? If you were doing a good job at managing that issue, you wouldn’t be reading this article. Maybe just looking for ways to improve your efficiency?
The first problem is to make a personal decision and commitment to maximize your office efficiency, whatever it takes. Nothing happens when you try to dabble intermittently with mediocre attempts. It takes time and management of the issue because it does not happen otherwise. If this is not something you are willing to do, then it’s not worth your time. You should just continue at the level you are on now and live with the well-known consequences.
Most physicians won’t commit to the time it takes, just too busy with patient care. This is the same reason 99% of physicians, even those who see the financial problems increasing, fail to do anything to save their practice.
Even the simple truth that shaving off enough time from the patient care routine to make your practice highly efficient daily (means tripling your income and a reality you can believe in) is too difficult for most physicians to accept.
And that’s because they think it’s going to be a permanent extra job in the office that goes on forever. And it does go on for the total length of your private medical practice career. There’s a lot more to that story you need to know… next.
The tactics, teamwork, and infrastructure that you create in your medical practice business office to increase efficiency can be accomplished is a matter of a few weeks, not months. Secondly, once the functions involved in the process become so routine to everyone, it certainly will provide surprises for you that you would not have expected—thus, can be perpetuated with very minimal medical practice management forever.
An efficient medical practice business office results in opening enough time to increase the patient appointment time to allow 8 to 10 more patients to be seen daily. Would that be of value to you?
The increase of efficiency eliminates wasted time (most offices have way too much wasted time that goes unnoticed), improves patient rapport (patients seen on time without long waiting time), staff routines are fixed and automatic (staff does not have to wonder what needs to be done next), and the efficiency effects become a way of life leading to much more satisfaction from their efforts.
Every medical practice business knows that adjustments must be made over time to remain effective, and nothing is perfect. You get it to the level you and your office staff can handle, and medical practice management becomes much more efficient, tolerable, and profitable.
Efforts that pay off in the long run…
First, I suggest that you read my “how” articles on this topic on my physician teaching website, www.marketingamedicalpractice.com website. If you are not already on my physician teaching website, that has been online since 2012 and is now (Jan. 2022) being upgraded, expanded, and updated to the present time, permit yourself to a open-door to your success in medical practice.
Efficiency is the result from having a business system established and that defines every element of the system in detail, while providing the exact sequence of functional actions that will be taking place in the process from the start to the finish of the objective.
In commercial businesses such as automobile manufacturing it is called an assembly line, something that we have all seen video examples of on TV.
When you introduce that similar set of processes to your medical office, your medical practice becomes not only efficient, but also becomes more profitable, medical patients more comfortable, and quickly learned by your employee staff. It takes a patient from the moment of arrival at your office, through every sequential step of their healthcare management in your office and leaving
out the door.
My articles about setting up such a system in your private medical office are titled…
1. Article 25- “Medical Office Staff Training—Every Doctor’s
Achilles Heel”
2. Article 20- “How A Business System Prevents You from Being
Incarcerated at The Poor Farm”
3. Article 37- “How to Outsource Your Medical Office Jobs to
Reduce Overhead”
Real efficiency is possible only when you have some sort of office practice business system structured in a sequential manner. The details of each segment must be printed out so that any office staff person can read and follow the specific steps you have set up for them—how you want your medical office set-up to provide maximum income on a persistent basis.
The most important value of using this system in your medical practice is that of enabling a newly hired office staff member to learn their job that they were hired to do by going to the three-ring binder and reading what and how their job(s) duties are to be done properly—takes them 15 minutes to learn without you being present or teaching them.
That person can step into their job in 20 minutes and do it as efficiently as the person who they are replacing did for years. Remember that all your office staff members will leave their employment in your office on average every 5 years and must be replaced.
----Professional Probe----
"This is what your medical practice looks like
when you focus more on your patients and less
on your medical practice business."
Articles©2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #108, 3-16-22
