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Archives : private practice
Vantage Forums: Choosing the right entity for your practice
We get the question all the time: “What type of entity should I choose for my practice?”
It’s a loaded question, and depends on many factors including tax implications, legal ramifications, simplicity, liability protection, and more. Of the many great resources offered by the Small Business Administration (www.sba.gov), here is a nice and simple resource that outlines many of the factors that should be considered when choosing an entity for a practice.
via Vantage Forums: Choosing the right entity for your practice.
Vantage Forums: County Health Rankings Website
During a recent Market Analysis presentation at CSM 2010, I mentioned a website link that was referenced in a recent email by the APTA. The website is called “County Health Rankings” and the url is www.countyhealthrankings.org. This is an excellent resource for market health data at the county level and provides a number of data categories as well as an explanation of the data collection methodology and relevance for each. Really a great resource and I recommend you bookmark it…remember, data is EVERYWHERE!
via Vantage Forums: County Health Rankings Website.
Everybody is the best. What you need is to be different.
This is a bit hard to stomach, but it’s the cold, hard truth: I’m no better than the next guy.
At least that’s what I need to tell myself. And you should consider the same.
The reason for this is pretty simple…everyone is the best. Now, you might be able to argue the case that this isn’t possible (I mean, how can everyone really be the best, after all), but for all practical purposes – all purposes that matter to the owner of a business – it absolutely, vehemently, 100% is the case, and should be treated as such.
Think of it this way: You’re marketing your practice to your community, your referral sources, and maybe even a payer or two. You need to give them a reason to use you, right? So, what do you tell them…that you’re mediocre? That you’re about half as good as the doctor’s office across the street?
If you’re still in practice you don’t.
You tell them that you’re the best, right? Sure you do – but guess what – so does everyone else.
So, you might have established that you’re the best – right along with the other 100 practices in your market – but what you’ve probably failed to do is establish that you’re different.
In competitive markets (which health care is, and will continue to be), being different is better than being the best. Being different in a way that people can remember, enjoy, and talk about will achieve a return on your marketing investment that far outpaces any returns you’ll achieve by letting everyone know how good you are.
You might be different because you own a piece of equipment that no one else has. You might be different because your approach is a bit off the beaten path. You might be different because your office is clean and plays nice music. And yes, in some cases you might actually be different because you are the best (just don’t get too caught up on this one).
If you look hard enough, you’ll find that you are different…and that’s actually what really matters in marketing. So, go ahead – be the best. I will too. Just do it behind closed doors and give people another reason to use you.
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Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Economic slowdown requires quick business
When working with practices, I often hear comments like this:
“It’s hard to compete with the hospitals, they have all the physicians locked in”
“It’s hard to compete with XYZ rehab corporation, they have so many locations”
“XYZ company has all the insurance contracts.”
However, in times of change, more is not always better. Small businesses – specifically private practices – may not have every insurance contract, every referral source locked up, or every location covered; but they do have something their large competitors do not — the ability to implement change quickly.
This is a big deal, especially in a slow economy, and it is often overlooked. More referral sources, more locations, and more contracts also means more to manage. Many organizations struggle to manage one or two referral sources, contracts or locations well, and adding more to the equation can sometimes simply compound inefficiencies, errors, or quality.
In response to the economic slowdown, having “more” requires greater efforts to change. Small business, private practices have a greater ability to implement change and respond more quickly to the market. Despite this, it is common for managers and owners to overlook this opportunity, and they often do not leverage this strength of their business to compete against the larger players in the market.
In fact, managers and owners often make business decisions that limit this quality of their practice. When making business decisions, consider how to sustain your practice’s agility and quickness to implement change. With our economic slowdown, everyone is rethinking how they do business to thrive in this climate. In response, implementing change could be like riding a jet ski for those in private practice, compared with navigating the Titanic for the behemoth hospital organizations or corporations.
To maintain quick and agile business practices during the economic slowdown, consider the following:
- Flexibility is an invaluable, intangible characteristic.
- Hire the person who offers to work a range of hours rather than the person who demands 40 hours per week from 9 am to 5pm.
- Avoid accruing large fixed costs, these will limit your ability to sustain a profit with highly variable revenue.
- Contracts with lengthy time commitments need hard consideration. Do you have a solid vision for where your practice will be in 12 months given our dynamic health care climate, let alone 3 or 5 years from now?
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Bridget Morehouse PT, MBA is a consultant with Steffes and Associates, a rehabilitation consulting firm based in Wisconsin.
Email marketing in private practice
I love email. It’s efficient, versatile, and just about everyone uses it. If done right, email can convey emotion, professionalism, and can strengthen (or quickly harm) one’s reputation. I use email for a variety of purposes including personal communications, education and learning, professional communications, and even marketing.
Marketing with email is a slippery slope, and can as easily build a business as it can tear it down. If not done correctly, email marketing can take the form of “spam,” or unsolicited mass distribution of a sales pitch or marketing message.
The good news is that email marketing done correctly can build one’s reputation and market appeal by offering genuine, unique information that is relevant to recipients, and in a manner that isn’t obnoxious or invasive. This application is just the right fit for clinical practices, as by and large, we offer services to a fairly homogeneous group of customers (patients), all of which can benefit from scheduled updates, education, and information regarding their health.
Email as a marketing tool for private practices is efficient, cost-effective, and convenient for both the creator and the recipient of the marketing message. Below are a few ideas for how to craft an email marketing campaign for any type of private practice, and here is a link to a great article about email marketing at the Small Business Branding blog.
- Add “Email Address” to your patient intake form, and a check box to “opt-in” to your email newsletter. This is a quick way to build your distribution list and is a good point of conversation to patients as they become familiar will all of the services offered by your practice. The likelihood of patients opting-in is much higher in a personal setting such as a healthcare practice than it is on a website.
- Use your email campaign to promote upcoming events at your practice.
- Notify your distribution list of community events and sponsorships that your practice is involved with. This can help to increase attendance at these events, but most importantly it communicates the message to your audience that you are active in the community, and on the local radar.
- Provide links within your newsletter to resources outside of those offered only by your practice. This builds credibility and adds value to the newsletter as it can be a means of educating your audience about information that can help them.
- Include a link that allows recipients to “ask a question” or otherwise interact with practitioners in a way that is informative and approachable.
- Include original content published by clinic practitioners so that your audience can begin to understand that your expertise is both broad and multi-dimensional.
There are hundreds of other ideas for your email campaign, and I know of no other industry where building a “community” around your business is as conducive as it is in healthcare. Your patients most likely love what you have to offer, and by communicating with them on a regular basis through a simple and cost-effective email campaign, you are providing yourself with an easy way to strengthen your relationship with them, while providing them with value that your competitors may not.
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Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a national healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website by clicking here.
Don’t chase the needle
Last Friday, I was fortunate enough to be invited by my friend, Tod, to go flying. An aspiring pilot, I leapt at the opportunity, taking the morning off to view Central Oregon from above.
Now, I’ve been up in private aircraft a few times, but I have never experienced flying like this. It was the perfect combination: An enviable airplane, spectacular weather, and great company — all of which combined to make this experience one that I won’t soon forget. I learned a bit about flying, and if you read on, a bit about private practice as well.
The airplane was a Vans RV series plane, completely teched out with electronic navigation, GPS, plush interior, and Sirius satellite radio — definitely as nice as my novice eyes have seen. I was truly impressed.
The weather was as clear as it gets in Central Oregon — not a breeze, bump, or cloud in the sky. It was “smooth as silk” as they say, and I could see to the top of the Cascades, all the way to Silver Lake, and back to Smith Rocks, all without a squint. And the company, as I said, was great.
This was my first time flying with Tod, and he was accompanying me on this flight as both a friend and mentor. He’s been a pilot since 1979, and as much as he loves flying, I could tell that he derived equal, if not greater pleasure from turning others onto the sport.
It should have been no surprise then, when no more than 120 seconds after takeoff, just as I was beginning to control the awe with which I was viewing the landscape, that he said – “OK, take it, it’s yours.”
“Whoa.”
This was a great opportunity, and mighty generous of Tod, but independent of all that, I really didn’t have much of a choice — I could look like a wimp who’s afraid of the stick, or take it confidently while submitting a silent prayer for both of our safety. I did the latter, never letting on that I was the least bit nervous — I think.
So, I took the stick, and with palm sweaty, figured, “maybe if I don’t move, this thing will fly itself.” Not a bad strategy until it was time for my first lesson.
The first lesson went something like this, “Spin this thing around three hundred sixty degrees — go ahead and really bank it.”
“O…K…,” I said. Not sure that I “really banked” it, but I did manage to do the 360…probably in no less than a 5 mile radius.
After that lesson though, it sort of clicked, and I became fairly comfortable up there. I mean, after all, there was a long way down for him to take over and correct, and what the heck, why not just loosen up and enjoy the flight.
So, this is what we did for the next hour or so, when my lesson switched from “banking it” to “not chasing the needle.”
Chasing the needle happens when you’re striving for a certain altitude — in our case, 7,500 feet — and you make your adjustments just agressively enough that you shoot past your target and to the other side. For us, it looked something like this:
“OK, doing good, just about 7,500 ft…oh, whoops, 7,600 ft — better correct — there we go, got it, ah, whoops 7,400 ft — darn it, let’s go back the other way, perfect — ah man, 7,700 ft,” and so on.
It’s really a struggle when you know you need to head a certain direction in order to correct, and by the time you’ve made what you think is the right adjustment, you’ve hung on just long enough to require a correction in the opposite direction.
The advice from Tod: “Don’t chase the needle. Make small adjustments, lay off a bit, re-assess where you’re at, and adjust again. Don’t continue making your adjustments until you actually see the needle hit the mark — if you do you’ll end up chasing the needle to the other side.”
Sound familiar?
It should. As you’re likely aware, there’s a lot more chasing of the needle than happens in airplanes. While the gravity of the situation may appear greater at 7,500 feet, the principle applies to every mark we try to make, whether up in the air or in our own businesses.
In private practice, the mark that we’re shooting for might be patient volume, profitability, customer satisfaction, or anything in between. The needle usually comes in the form of financial or productivity reports, outcomes and satisfaction surveys, or staff retention — basically anything that is measured within the practice. The “stick” might be the marketing campaign, customer service training, clinical education, or anything else that is done to try to “meet the mark.”
At 7,500 feet, the altitude adjustment was pretty straightforward — push forward to go down, pull back to go up. In a private practice, the adjustments are many, and the best method of tracking toward objectives are not always easy to do. Increasing volume may require a combination of marketing plus customer service training; the financial profitability gauge may be more responsive to adjustments by way of expense reduction rather than revenue generation; and patient satisfaction may be tied more to clinical outcomes than to flexible appointment times. No practice is the same, and it’s the job of the owner or administrator to understand which adjustments should be made, and how aggressively to make them.
The key is, regardless of which adjustments you are making, don’t throw everything at the gauge and expect not to chase the needle. In private practice, it is critical to do just Tod said: “Make small adjustments, lay off a bit, re-assess where you’re at, and adjust again.”
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Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a national healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website by clicking here.
Private practice – a flawed business model?
Here is an interesting take from an economist looking at the “business model” of small health care practices.
For most small business owners, the productivity of each employee increases revenue. Whether the product is a widget or a hot-dog or computer software, the general concept of employee productivity is that employees increase revenue and the more revenue per employee the better. Thus as sales escalate to the point of needing another employee, the revenue from that person’s productivity more than covers his cost. Thus scaleable businesses typically have desirable business models.
In private practice medicine, revenue is dependent on the productivity of one person – the doctor. Hiring more employees does not increase his productivity. The only thing that can increase revenue is for the doctor to work harder and faster to see more patients or do more procedures. He is the rate-limiting step in the business model. This is the reason why your trips to the doctor’s office get shorter and shorter.
Check out the rest of this article here.
Branding has a place in private practice
Developing a strong brand has a definite place within private practice healthcare. A lot of practice owners don’t (or don’t want to) acknowledge this, thinking [erroneously] that simply hanging out their shingle and providing good care will keep the practice full.
Guess what? Everyone provides good care…at least we all say we do.
To develop a following requires a brand, and it doesn’t matter if you are a doctor, dentist, physical therapist, or an auto mechanic. Like it or not, your “brand” is what comes to mind when your patients are deciding whether or not to come see you for the first, second, and 100th time.
One thing about a brand is that one will find you whether or not you put in the time, money, and effort to craft it yourself. And depending on who you are and what you create, this can be a good or bad thing. You might be the doctor with bad breath, the dentist with the rude front office staff, or the physical therapist who is always late for appointments – believe it or not, these brands exist even though we would never choose them.
The process of branding can be likened to the development of our own personal attributes. Our looks, clothes, personality, achievements, networks, experiences, and anything else that adds to (or detracts from) our appeal to others is basically what constitutes our own “personal brand.” Now, branding as related to our personal development is only partially in our own control – we can’t control what we look like (well, thanks to the medical field I guess we can), our personalities are inherently difficult to change, and our achievements, networks, and experiences are in part built from the innate attributes that we are born with.
When branding our private practices we have much more freedom to carefully craft a brand position that will appeal to our market, helping to make our practices more successful through broader (or in some cases, very specific) appeal. It takes time, energy, and often entails a reasonable budget, but is there any doubt that development of the right brand is worth it?
This post from the Branding Strategy Insider talks about the seven concepts critical to positioning your brand in your market.
What seven concepts are critical to positioning?
1. Perception (their’s, not your’s)
2. Differentiation
3. Competition
4. Specialization
5. Simplicity
6. Leadership
7. Reality
Entrepreneurs: Who to call on when government can’t fix healthcare
We understand the business of healthcare. Well, at least we think we do.
From our perspective, “business” has a role in healthcare, and we believe that in today’s healthcare arena we can’t stand around and expect things to get better unless we contribute to the solution ourselves. At Vantage, the particular tool we use to effect change within our scope of influence is pretty simple…it’s entrepreneurship. There’s not a single way we do it, not a perfected process that we share with the world, and we often don’t even use the same ideas twice. Entrepreneurship doesn’t work like that, at least not around here.
To us, entrepreneurship is always a unique process, but it does involve three common elements: (1) the recognition of opportunity, (2) the acceptance of the risk required to take advantage of the opportunity, (3) and the enjoyment of the rewards that [may] follow from entrepreneurial endeavors. By involving these elements in the development of private practice business models within healthcare, practice owners will find a way to navigate through whatever the economy, government, or corporate America throw our way.
The trick is not knowing how to “fix” the healthcare system. There isn’t a single fix. The trick is being creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial in our approach to today’s healthcare environment, and with this, being willing to experiment and learn about what works and what doesn’t.
There are many business models in development today (and many that have been in development for years) that might, and might not change the face of our healthcare landscape. But, in the same way that the creation of some of our most valuable inventions and most successful business models of today started with nothing more than a few visionaries willing to accept some risk in order for the chance at some future reward, so our healthcare industry exists as well.
On The Healthcare Entrepreneur and at Vantage Clinical Solutions, we look first to encourage entrepreneurship within our industry, and second at the merit of the ideas that come our way. Bad ideas can be refined into good, but ideas that are never brought to the table can do nothing to help our current healthcare situation in America.
In a recent post on the Health Business Blog, David Williams also acknowledges the role of entrepreneurship within healthcare, and provides examples of entrepreneurs within a variety of areas within the healthcare industry. It’s a great post and a quick read, so take a look.
I’d like to suggest that entrepreneurs and private industry more generally are underappreciated assets in the health reform debate –and that just possibly some entrepreneurs are already in the process of helping the country turn the corner on key dimensions. If that’s true, the role of policymakers –and voters– becomes clearer and more achievable: to create the conditions under which entrepreneurs can thrive.
Lessons in entrepreneurship from medical practices
More and more I’m seeing healthcare practices (medical, dental, physical therapy, optometry, etc.) getting really entrepreneurial about their business models. Most of this is born out of necessity in order to find ways to stay profitable, but some of it comes from clinicians making the decision to run their practices in a way consistent with their passions, interests, and lifestyle.
There is a lot to be learned from a client of mine who is starting up a practice. She is really doing things right. When developing her business concept she knew early on that she wanted her practice to be different, and truly wanted to enjoy the way she spent her time each and every day. She began with a mission and vision for her practice model, and has crafted everything else around it. From brand position, to information systems, to software selection, to interior design, to financial modeling, she has built a practice that all ties back to her mission and vision. This is the first step in creating a business that lasts.
There are some very practical things she is doing right as well. She is putting a great team of business advisors and experts around her and has allowed us all to provide her with direction and guidance. She realizes that this is a team effort, and the better the team, the better the end result. Financially she is sound, and has secured the necessary operating capital to get her through several months of operations based on “worst-case” scenarios. And regarding her patient clientele, she is pounding the pavement in order to build up her caseload months before the doors even open. She will be successful for the long term, and it’s because she’s acting not only like a clinician, but also like an entrepreneur.
I read an article today that started me thinking about the client above, and it was about an entrepreneurship forum in Kansas in which business owners were learning about how to plan for success for the long haul. Interestingly, one of the speakers at the entrepreneurship forum was a founder of a medical group. This is exciting to me, as I believe that entrepreneurship within healthcare is the answer to many the problems that befall us in this industry. Private practice owners need to become entrepreneurial in their approach to business practices in order to make significant shifts in payment models, service offerings, and cost reduction. I’m really glad to see that entrepreneurship in healthcare is being used to educate others through this healthcare panelist, and I especially love to see it within the clients I work with day to day.
Three successful Wichita service-based entrepreneurs told a story of faith Thursday at Wichita State University’s Center for Entrepreneurship.
Have a business idea, believe in it, find people who complement your talents and establish a brand, said business owners in medicine, advertising and investment.
Joseph Galichia, founder of Galichia Medical Group; Sonia Greteman, chief executive of Greteman Group; and Corporate Lodging Consultants founder Barry Downing were the speakers at WSU’s final spring entrepreneurship forum.
The advice-oriented session focused on what makes a service-based business go, something the three panelists largely agreed on.
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