One of the very worst things any consultant in private practice can do is get involved when he shouldn’t.
When is that?
It’s when he or she is doing ANYTHING other than seeing or operating on a patient.
ROI
Otherwise known as “Return on Investment”, ROI in simple English means you invest £1 in the expectation of getting £1.50 or £2 back.
However, the investment made by a consultant may not be just financial.
It’s also the TIME invested in his practice too.
For example: if a consultant earns £150 per consultation and each lasts 30 minutes, he will earn £300 an hour.
Thus for each hour “invested” he makes £300
Madness.
So why is it I’m always coming across consultants who won’t pay somebody else to do a job because that’s too expensive.
The consultant prefers to do it himself because it’s cheaper.
Unfortunately, whilst he is doing the task, he can’t see more patients.
Is It Cheaper?
Unless whoever he employs is charging him £300 or more to do a job, it’s actually cheaper to pay them to do the job and go see two more patients each hour.
Let’s assume it’s going to cost the consultant £100 to have a task completed by someone else.
The consultant will still be £200 better off.
But some consultants make it even worse.
Not only do they try to negotiate the lowest possible price they are prepared to pay engaging someone else to do a task (say £50), they then constantly interfere.
They interfere because they truly believe that they could do a better job themselves. That doesn’t actually make them right. It means they made the wrong choice in appointing the person to do the job in the first place.
They shouldn’t be able to do the job better than the person they appointed.
The Ultimate Sin.
The ultimate sin is when they do indeed employ somebody better than themselves to complete a task but then constantly interrupt that person.
Effectively they are paying someone else £100 to do the job but also missing out on the extra 2 patients an hour worth £300.
Thus they are actually loosing out on £400.
A MUCH better idea is to find someone who can do the job better than you can, pay them LESS than you could earn in the length of time to do the job and then???
Let them get on with it!
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk