Building Your Medical Practice

Multiple Considerations

If you’re building a medical practice, you’re making a smart move that can definitely lead to sustainable long-term profit. However, intentions and plans definitely benefit from counsel, research, and strategy. You want to carefully consider every move, and develop a firm foundation from which to build your business.

The infrastructural design will be a big part of that foundation. You need something flexible enough to grow with your business as it becomes established and expands. Simultaneously, you need something that can be relatively stationary in terms of reliability and navigability. Over-extensive processes don’t do you any favors, minimized operations let things slip by.

There’s a balance, and a body of professionals could write a textbook about getting it right. A good way to start is identifying core features of operations from which will extend more detailed components of management. Here we’ll briefly cover three key pillars in the construction of an “architecturally sound” medical practice.

1. Establishing A Niche, A Market, And Locational Infrastructure

What will your medical practice focus on, what will it specialize in, and where can you make enough money to keep the lights on? Certainly, you may expand outward from an initial medical offering, but the more services you provide, the more associated expenses develop.

Dentist practices may expand into more in-depth orthodontic procedures. The general practice may expand into pediatrics. But if a business tries to do both at once, it’s likely going to take longer to become stable, and it will likely be more expensive.

Part of that expense will also be your location both directly and indirectly. Centrality to demographics served is key, but there may be competitor concerns. Also, the cost of the property can be very steep.

Find ways of cutting property costs initially without sacrificing what your practice ultimately offers. Leasing has its place; though sometimes this is a bad move. Consultation helps reveal which way to go given what you do specifically, and the community you plan to serve.

2. Securing Reliable Options That Enable Profitability

Payor contracting tends to be an important part of sustainable profit. Because of the complications involved, many payers strategically rewrite contracts in a way that tends to be inconvenient for medical practices. That’s a good reason it makes sense to explore payor contracting with HPA or other similar trusted organizations.

Beyond payor contracting, you also want to think about traditional means of collecting payments. That will require some sort of cashiering protocol with front office secretaries, associated bank accounts, records-keeping, and the like. Pricing will also be part of your profitability engine and can be a factor in methods of payment. Most insurance companies have some sort of co-pay.

While there are certain medical businesses that won’t need to operate this way—like some government facilities or corporate medical offices on a business campus—most new practices will need to think about the infrastructure behind cash flow.

3. Acquiring The Right Personnel

It’s also a very good idea to be sure you hire the right people. One of the biggest and most important investments for any company is in its employees. The staff of your medical practice is no different; in fact, associated specialization indicates an even greater emphasis on this feature of business.

Establishing A Strong Medical Practice

The right people, the right resource management protocols, focusing on a specific niche, finding the right market, and securing the right location represent fundamental aspects of establishing a medical practice. The details will differ, but following best practices in core areas of business like these will help establish your operation.