It is marvelous how some private practices manage to make ANY money.
Actually, in one recent case, I’m not entirely sure the consultant concerned was making any money at all.
More frighteningly, the consultant did know if he was or not.
Unknown.
He didn’t know because he spent most of his time stumbling from crisis to crisis.
Either he hadn’t got enough patients booked to see him or he’d never sat down and thought about how he could get more patients. Scary stuff.
When I looked at his billing, it came as no surprise to realise he was weeks behind.
Cash or a general lack of it was becoming a big crisis for him for each month he was forced to inject money into the practice.
He literally was stumbling from crisis to crisis.
Drill Down
As I drilled down through the clinic list one item stuck out.
There was a complete lack of patient details. What details were available, were inadequate. Not good.
The scary bit.
The scary bit was the realisation there was no formal plan to stop this getting worse.
He hadn’t allowed himself time to think about how to stop the issue from happening because he was stumbling from crisis to crisis.
This was having a major impact not only on his practice but also on his staff.
They were mightily fed up with lurching from one disaster to another and thus they voted with their feet.
So I recommended to him he immediately – and I do mean now!! – put a process in place that makes sure ALL patient details are correct.
But…to do so he must STOP, demanding of his staff they “drop everything” and sort whatever today’s crisis was.
Desire
As he explained to me, his stated desire was to stop having to put money into the practice in order to keep it afloat.
Instead, he wanted to take money out!
A very simple and absolutely perfect goal.
Otherwise, why be in private practice??
But to achieve his desire he needed to do one thing FIRST.
He needed to stop stumbling from crisis to crisis.
or to quote his words and not mine he “needed to stop being a busy fool”
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk