"Your ultimate potential and income in private
medical practice can only be attained by using the
principles of business success."
Undoubtedly, every medical doctor today in the medical profession is to a great extent disregarding, or is ignorant about, the requirements for business success. If you have never been taught what those principles are, then you are a prime candidate for failure, to some variable extent, in your private medical practice business.
The practice of medicine is a business that can’t ultimately be significantly profitable and successful outside of some kind of a business structure. Even if you start a medical practice with a cardboard shack in the center of main street, to stay in business you must receive enough payment for your services to pay for the cost and maintenance of that business, let alone enough to
survive on personally.
Simple logic tells you that medical practice is a business, and that fact is not hidden from a reasonably intelligent physician.
You know it, and yet you have a profound mental barrier to obtaining the business knowledge necessary to create a medical practice business or to apply medical practice management with maximal efficiency, profitability, and productivity. Inevitably, your self-destructive attitude of disregarding this need permeates every aspect of your future in medical practice business. Sure "
it costs money to obtain business knowledge, but the cost of it will serve you for a lifetime.
If the truth be told, the academic medical school education and training commonly never included or was even important enough to the scholars to demonstrate to the medical students the extensive benefits and medical practice business value to a formal business education. A 174 accredited Medical schools in our nation accept no responsibility for providing a business education. Recently, a few have begun to see the light, and have assimilated it into the medical school curriculum.
If you wanted to increase your surgical skills you wouldn’t swagger into the operating room one day and try your new ideas out on one of the patients you found in the preop room. Not likely.
You’d recognize the necessity to get the training from surgeons who have expertise in the procedure before jumping into the operating theater. So the question is, “Why is it that almost 100% of doctors assume they can manage a successful and profitable business of private medical practice with no significant business knowledge or training?”
"Success is usually cooked-up in a messy kitchen"
----Dan S. Kennedy
The ancient myth that, "Physicians don't need a business education," has been perpetuated through the last century, through the industrial economic revolution around 1900, and up to today. Essentially all businesses were forced to economically adapt to the changing economic system, except for a few professional businesses (medical, dental and legal).
My experience with the unexpected consequences resulting from my clinging on to the myth that I didn't need to know business and marketing, began rather suddenly. For the first few years in my private medical practice, earnings start low and slowly increase as patients feel the need to "try out" the new doctor in town.
The collected scraps of business advice from local doctors get you started with the basics. The new experienced medical office employees supplement the business with their accumulated office business know-how. Other than looking at the monthly CPA summaries to check the income for the month, no tracking of the growth of the practice seemed important.
Like the thousands of physicians across the nation, one day I recognized that the seasonal dip in monthly practice income was persisting. How could that happen? What if it continues?
It happened to me in my medical practice, which I’m ashamed to admit. The shocker came when the accounts employee said there was not enough income to pay the bills and the salaries. When I recognized my practice was going down hill I had no idea how to reverse the process.
A business education would have resolved that problem for me months before that. By using the business strategies and business tools I would have known then, that a tragedy could be avoided. But, I did not know.
Don’t try to tell me you haven’t had a financial problem with your own medical practice or that it never happened to you! Since you didn’t have the business knowledge either, you must have hired some help to resolve the issue. Did you receive good help? At what cost? Did you save your
private practice?
The business mistakes that that drag you into the financial quicksand, more often than not, are recognized too late for rescue.
What amazes me is the extreme amount of rationalization that any physician, like I did, must fabricate to convince themselves that their practice and income is “good enough" and they
aren’t a "failure.”
The debate about what failure means or what real success is to each physician, will go on forever. But, it does seem reasonable to apply some specific way of grading or categorizing degrees of failure or success. My personal criterion for evaluating those issues is a concept about how passionate you are about being the best doctor you can be.
Here it is...Is your heart in it?
If one enters the medical profession to spend their life treating and curing illness, deep down inside of every physician there is a passion to become the best doctor possible by obtaining and using the skills and knowledge required to do that.
That’s my baseline also for obtaining and using necessary business knowledge in order to raise your money machine (medical practice) up to a level that enables you to be the best doctor you desire to be. You can’t do it without earning enough money to afford it.
In order to afford to make yourself a top doc, you will have to have a top-of-the-line medical practice business machine. And, how do you do that? Well… by doing something about each of the following medical practice business success criteria.
The solution today for avoiding all medical practice business issues is to become a physician employee where someone else takes care of business stuff every day. And, you hope they know what they are doing.
Violation #1 - Assuming that you don’t need to know how to apply medical practice business management, leads to all the others below. It seems unbelievable that highly intelligent physicians could in their hearts know this mindset is wrong and then don’t take action on it.
The thought of taking time out of your earlier medical school education or your medical practice marketing efforts to learn the criteria for smart medical practice business management with an eye on profitability, is far from most physician's minds.
The consequences are numerous in spite of the fact that physicians can learn enough about medical practice business management properly through reading business books and online business courses when not seeing patients. As of March 2022, NO medical school is teaching medical students anything about medical practice management, medical practice business marketing, or how to reach their ultimate success as a physician. (a tragedy).
Additionally, college pre-meds are neither told about the need for medical practice business knowledge, nor the value and advantages it has for their careers (when they could start their business education there).
Business knowledge is never wasted. It may not be important to you now, but if you lose your private medical practice in the future, or become disabled and can't practice medicine, or if you quit medicine sometime in the future and apply for work in other industries, business knowledge suddenly becomes a gold mine for you.
Violation #2 - Nearly all physicians have no understanding about hiring and firing employees. Most physicians rely on the recruitment of office staff by a classified ad, employment agency, or referral from another doctors’ office. When it comes to interviewing a prospective employee, physicians are blind and suffer the consequences of hiring bad employees.
As a result, office employees come and go on a frequent interval, never are trained to do what is expected of them at the office, never understand the concept of a "team effort." They are there for their own personal reasons, not the physicians, are not held to strict responsibilities of their job and end up doing what they learned in other employed positions. It's because the medical doctor never sets the rules for what he or she wants done.
The consequences include lazy employees, work and job chores screwed up frequently, office staff friction or combat, a significant increase in the need for office management to keep things
working right.
Nothing is worse than employees irritable and nasty to patients, no teaching of employees so they do what they “think” the doctor wants and the way they “think” the medical doctor wants it done. The office can be a war zone. I’ve seen examples of this.
Violation #3 - Lack of medical practice business management by the doctor leads to the greatest blunders and creates the most critical barriers to medical practice business productivity
and profitability.
This is likely the most common reason for the financial failure of medical practice and secondarily, the reason that most medical doctors never become wealthy while leaving a million dollars on the table during their medical practice career.
You doctor, are the boss, teacher, inspiration officer, team leader, persuasion expert, punisher, mediator, follow-up contractor, assignment director, financial manager, public affairs director, advertising and marketing expert, and check signer, whether you want to be or not. CONTROL is the word you need to use here. Farmers do it with a harness and reins.
You owe it to yourself to be totally in control of your medical practice business management in addition to your professional duties. Who’s going to do it, if you don’t? Actually, coaching programs to help you with all these things are available.
This assumes that you sincerely want to earn enough money to send your kids to any college they want and completely fund your retirement program early in your practice career. When such thoughts are not on your list, living in professional poverty is still an acceptable position to be in, as long as the government entitlements continue.
Violation #4 - Your lack of financial management of your medical practice business is mandatory. Who is responsible in your office for handling financial accounts? I’m not talking about a remote CPA across town or your attorney who has about as much financial knowledge as you do.
Being knowledgeable about your business finances, is how you prove to yourself that you are doing the right thing…or not. Meaning, that when you have a staffer write out your business checks, you must be the person who signs every check.
This trick is a means of seeing where your money is going and what it’s paying for. You will notice when you don’t have the income to cover the overhead and is where you can spot places where you should cut back on.
Supporting a mistress or significant other, is not what I’m talking about here.
Most physicians in my experience don’t know how to evaluate a financial statement. It’s a lot more of a challenge than you may think, especially if you use the information to guide the finances of
your practice.
Just knowing the total income and expense total for the month doesn’t cut it. Have you ever gone back into the last 6 monthly financial statements and compared the figures and the “drift.” Most physicians could care less about checking financial statements.
The trends and drift of your business flow can only be of value when you can document the direction of the flow accurately.
To manage the pulse of your finances you must be continuously monitoring the financial details of your medical practice.
Violation #5 - This means that you have no written business plan. Having a medical practice business plan in your head permits you to change the plan anytime without a good business reason. You also lose your focus on your goals for your practice and career. It’s no different than pulling the lever
on a slot machine.
Written business plans are not expected to remain intact for the next 30 years. An annual or 6 month review is important so that you can revise the plan (usually only a couple pages of it) to match the situation of your private medical practice business and the changes you have made in your goals and objectives.
Writing out a medical practice business plan fixes those steps in your mind and remains in your memory banks constantly. Mental plans don’t. For many people, writing down information maximizes memory and learning speed.
Medical practice business plans are necessary for bank loans, for bringing in a partner, and for protecting your business from legal attacks.
How many physicians have a written medical practice business plan do you think? My guess is
about 5%. Ever revise them? Know what they are for?
Violation #6 - The lack of medical practice marketing knowledge in today’s economic environment leaves most medical practice businesses wanting. Knowing how to market your medical practice business is a mandatory long-term requirement for any doctor that wants to remain in private clinical medical practice.
The financial survival of private medical practice in view of competition for patients, increasing fee restrictions, and untethered medical malpractice assaults on physicians can only be maintained by physicians who are knowledgeable in the use of marketing businesses as well as themselves.
Yes, marketing yourself is something few physicians know how to do effectively. They leave that job to the integrity of their reputation... which is never enough. Marketing is a standard necessity for any business seeking to reach a level of profitability and success beyond all other similar professional businesses.
Further, medical practice marketing is the most powerful component of successful businesses that has the capacity to separate the men from the boys or winners from the losers. Interestingly, it is the one area of medical practice business management that nearly all medical doctors feel incompetent doing… for good reasons.
How can marketing for physicians and medical practice marketing in a continuing fashion help when you have had little or no education in marketing? But, that does not let you off the hook for making it a permanent part of your medical practice business. Marketing is a sub-segment of business education.
Unless you somehow learn the options for practice marketing, marketing for physicians, your medical practice business, and yourself (some call publicity), you will very soon be left in the dust of the other medical doctors who are taking time to learn the processes. You might say, “Doctors are getting smarter,” but it took a hell of a long time before most were persuaded about the remarkable value of marketing a medical practice.
Violation #7 - Physicians commonly do not think of themselves as salesmen or a salesperson. Selling yourself to your peers, your patients, your friends, and your whole medical community is a required business function for creating a very successful private medical practice business.
Most physicians are doing it to some degree intuitively… but it must be done with an intention to be noticeably and sufficiently effective.
I’m sure that you have met a few medical doctors that you would never refer your spouse or patients to for one of many reasons. Sometimes those distasteful characteristics severely compromise that medical doctor’s lifelong career in medicine.
Tragically, most of them don’t have any idea they are turning everyone away, up until a raging husband or spouse or another medical doctor threatens to harm them in some way.
You don’t have to be beautiful, play guitar, or sing well, just be a pleasant, friendly, helpful, and compassionate physician that everyone is happy to refer patients to.
What sells you to others are your basic attitude about things, people, and patients. That’s what first impressions are all about when you meet someone.
Open-mindedness and respect for the ideas and opinions of others are extremely valuable means of showing people you are a good person. Normally, these characteristics carry over into how you treat your own medical patients.
Have you ever told a patient, “Your symptoms are all in your head?” That’s the quickest way to lose a patient that I know, besides being one of the top ten things you should never say to a patient.
You sell yourself to every patient you treat. You sell yourself by persuading the patient to trust you. Once they trust you, they are far more willing to take your medical advice and follow your instructions. Am I right… or what!
Keep this business tactic in mind and continue to use it every day, even with your neighbor across the fence in spite of their barking dog that interrupts your sleep.
Violation #8 - When you don’t know that every successful and profitable business has implemented business systems into their business to get to the top, you find your business hurting.
If you haven’t been told about what business systems do for your business and how to use them for maximum efficiency and productivity of your medical practice, it brings tears to my eyes.
Highly successful businesses all over the world use business systems to power up their profitability. Even medical schools and hospitals use business systems for the same reasons.
If you have never heard of business systems and need to learn about them, you should read my eBook explaining the process in detail. Read my articles on the topic on this website.
Brief business systems summary
Think first of what an assembly line does for the auto industry. Thank you Henry Ford. Essentially, that’s what a business system does for your office business.
Your medical practice business system starts at the bottom and works upwards. Every job and work function in your office is performed using a rigid set of sequential performance steps that must be followed to complete the function properly.
When an office staff member deviates from that process, they are shot. Well… at least they are reminded of why the process is used and are then taught the reasons it helps to increase the medical practice income, which in turn enables increases in their salary. Might there be a motivation to do the job right next time?
Each function in your office is done by a set of steps start to finish. Above that level is a second business system in place to handle the results from each job function in a tight stepwise manner exactly the same each time.
Finally, the top “overall” system is created exactly the same way, and the sorted and evaluated results are given to the one in charge (No, that should never be your spouse.).
This system ensures that any newly hired person or any other office staff member can step into that job and handle it easily and instantly by following the sequential steps required. It eliminates teaching people over and over again, which costs time and money for any office to do.
You create the system and process sequences for your own office exactly like you want each job done. I think you get the idea of it all. It’s an ideal system of processes that always does what it’s supposed to do. However, you have to modify it to make it compatible with the way you want your medical practice management performed.
Sure it takes work and time to set up your systems, but you only have to do it once in your career. It’s simple to adjust and make changes when needed.
You can’t fool me. You would much rather forget the “systems thing” and put up with the constant and repetitive much larger work load of teaching, reminding, and correcting your office staff daily because they forget what you said to them three days later and resort again to doing their job the way they please—not the way you want it done.
Violation #9 - Most physicians think that the staff they hired already knows how to manage customer service in their medical practice business. Customer service regarding your patients is considered the least important issue of your medical practice business success. After all, everybody knows how to be nice to patients… right?
You may be surprised to know that how your patients are treated by your medical office staff is the most effective means of creating loyalty to your practice, of persuading patients to refer patients to you, and of enticing patients to market your medical practice for you free of charge.
Patients enjoy having “an experience” in your medical office and not simply an office visit with the medical doctor. That experience is what they remember, and is an effective way to retain patients who otherwise may migrate to another doctor’s office where they have a unique experience
every time.
Having a medical doctor’s visit, waiting in the reception area, and keeping the little kids from dumping over the lamps is not the greatest experience of their day, for sure.
When you neglect to make your patient’s visit to your office fun, unique, enjoyable, and go out the door with a smile, you have violated a rule of business marketing etiquette.
Much more detailed information about customer service in your medical office you can read
in my article on the topic.
Violation #10 - For private practice physicians, the necessity of maintaining continuous and perpetual attention to upgrading, refining, applying more effective strategies to the medical practice business and medical practice management becomes an after-thought or worse.
Think of your medical business as the home you just built or bought. The day that happened, an obligation to repair, maintain, and upgrade it became a commitment that never goes away.
Maintaining your medical practice business demands that same “contract” agreement with you, except that it is far more important to your life and career than any other obligation you may
consider essential.
For the great majority of physicians, that concept is lost in the wind... at least until the symptoms of a financially failing medical practice show up. Spending at least 4 to 6 hours a month concentrating on improving your business side of medical practice management will recharge your money machine batteries.
Since there is no one to keep reminding you of that, your attention to the business is left to your conscience, due diligence, memory banks, or being thrown to the mat by worry about paying your overhead bills.
Every successful business that is profitable and productive has an owner who recognizes the requirement for continuous attention to oiling his money machine twice a month.
Medical doctors frequently forget, ignore, or, unbelievably, just don’t know that it’s necessary. Some call that business ignorance. One fact is true. The end result is predetermined. Your medical practice will financially fail, judged by any successful business standards you apply.
It’s a sad fact that permeates the medical profession and is a profound reason your private medical practice career is doomed from the beginning… at least for those doctors who have been brainwashed by their medical training professionals.
Comments...
As of 2021, all physicians shoulder the responsibility of obtaining a solid business education on their own. Not only that, but you also have the responsibility of implementing those business principles into your medical practice as soon as possible.
Business knowledge and education are clearly available and it doesn't mean you have to blow your bankroll to get what you need to do well. All you have to do is make the issue a priority, determine how you want to get that knowledge/training, and choose the timing you will use to do all that.
Ignoring this necessity will definitely cause you to suffer during your medical practice career. If you are masochistic, then you may be able to handle it. But, you will have to admit that a business education does nothing but help any doctor in medical practice.
Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself. Make it a priority to interview 30 gray-haired doctors who have spent their medical careers in private medical practice, and give yourself a huge dose of reality.
I do have one more suggestion for you. Having a medical practice coach will ensure that you will do the right things and do them in the ways that are known to create great wealth and eliminate
your money worries.
P.S. Remember, you are the only one making the choices and goal setting that will determine your destiny in your medical practice career. Don’t leave it up to the circumstances as so many
physicians do.
----Professional Probe----
"Reflections uncover for us the medical practice
views we can't see otherwise."
The fact that a medical practice business management
must be effective for a medical practice business to be totally
successful, creates a love vs. hate relationship between
physicians and their responsibilities to their
medical practice business.
By learning about and implementing business
principles into your medical practice, you will open
new opportunities for increasing your medical practice business
profits as well as documenting for you that you are more capable
than you imagined. Become a business focused person
and a better physician.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #42, 3-16-22
