SurvivalStrategies.com: The KEYS to Private Practice Success, Part 2
By Harvey Schmiedeke | On March 15, 2008 | In Small-Business | Rated 
Opening your first private practice and being your own boss is cause for both excitement and knee-knocking jitters. You’re doing something, frankly, that you know nothing about. You are filled with hope and a desire to succeed. But you know the factors that put the majority of start-ups on the rocks, and what things you must know to navigate to success? In Part 1 of this series I discussed one of the myths that occur in private practice. This article continues with another common myth that encumbers owners.
A client wrote me a thank-you note echoing sentiments I had heard for decades - he “wished he’d known back then what he knows now.”
“PT school was more like a course designed to help me pass the license exam. We never really learned anything about Private Practice at all. In fact, we were encouraged to ‘get a job at a hospital’. ‘Administrative Training’ was a one-hour lecture titled, ‘Writing an Equipment Budget’. Since I am not a very good employee, I sort of had to work for myself until I met the professionals who helped me. From marketing, management and organization to billings and collections—I learned pretty much everything I really needed to know to run my business after I left school.” NC, PT, Seattle
Despite many years of clinical or professional training, most clinicians receive virtually nothing in the way of starting or running a practice, let alone the level of education or practical experience needed to ensure success. This “other half of your education” in private practice involves specific marketing, management and financial control skills indispensable to your ultimate success.
Some of your peers will never reach for the help they need. The sad fact is they are trapped by fixed ideas, myths, speculations or have accepted well-meaning advice that occurs from colleague-to-colleague or even during formal training. These are assumptions of how something should work or be, but not how they actually are. Such ideas are deceptive and need to be looked at head-on. You need to be able to spot these as traps or they will surely undermine your understanding of this subject.
If you want to maintain profits, peace of mind and see your practice succeed, pay heed to some common fixed ideas as they relate to the Keys to Practice Success—Patient Referral Development, PR and Marketing, Organization, and Cash Flow. In this article we will take up a “myth” of Organization and Practice Management followed by the truth of the matter, and then immediate “first aid” advice.
MYTH #2: ORGANIZATION AND PRACTICE MANAGEMENT:
“I’m not a manager, I’m a clinician. I’ll just hire someone to manage my practice.”
The Hard Fact: You are your own boss. You wear both clinic and management “hats” now.
Like it or not, if you own the practice, you are the manager. You just manage it well or manage it poorly or you dump your hat.
For example, it is a fatal mistake for a practice owner who is mystified or confused by one of the functions under him, to attempt to handle that function by hiring an “expert” and turning control of the area the owner does not fully understand to someone else.
The most successful practice owners in the U.S. can handle any and every marketing, clinical, management or financial job in their business. Staff know and respect this and a competent owner can’t have the wool pulled over his eyes.
When I see a clinic that just cannot grow beyond family-style management, I recognize that they are missing a fundamental law of building an organization. They do not know the difference between Phase I - beginning a new activity and Phase II - running an established activity. They never acquired the know-how to transition from one phase to the next, so stay stuck in Phase I forever.
Shackled with the fixed idea of “I’m not a manager”, the clinician who became an entrepreneur long enough to start a business doesn’t usually understand that there is a method to management and marketing, let alone how to train his staff in it! Recognizing and applying Phase I and Phase II are key in overcoming that.
Strategies for Organization and Management:
1. Make a long-term commitment to yourself and your practice to become as knowledgeable in the skills of management as you are as a clinician. Then ensure, year-by-year, that you receive formal instruction as a manager as well as continuing education in your clinical skills.
2. Draft an organizing board* for your clinic. Place stable, competent, trained people in executive positions.
3. Put your policies* in writing. Insist that each team member reads, understands and follows them. Key areas of policy in a private practice would specifically deal with patient care, how staff should express problems and solutions within the practice, a system for dealing with staff reviews and discipline. These points would be in addition to any standard policies required for insurance and privacy.
4. If you want to get out of Phase I on a post, it will be essential for you to set up a training program for staff. This would include formal instruction in the skills of their position, attendance at conventions and seminars, as well as in-servicing* on your particular policies and procedures. It is not “overkill” to have an in-service every week. The ideal arrangement is to have a dedicated, in-house space where you can oversee and assure on-going education.
A prospective client who was resisting an investment into training for her key executives asked, “But what if I train them and they leave?” So I asked, “What if you don’t train them and they stay?” She had no answer because that is what she’d been doing for years. Incidentally, it was that fixed idea which sat at the bottom of her 12 hour days, stress and practice chaos.
CONCLUSION
In the past, there was little alternative other than to learn things “the hard way”. Today practice owners, and even some of the brighter new graduates, understand that they can obtain the other half of their education by seeking help.
Glossary of special definitions--
In-servicing: Taking place or continuing while one is a full-time employee: in-service training workshops.
Organizing Board: A board that shows what functions are done in the org, the order they are done in, and who is responsible for getting them done.
Policy: Operational rules or guides for the organization which are not subject to change.
Mr. Schmiedeke is the nation’s foremost authority in the development of professional referrals, private practice management and marketing. As co-founder of Survival Strategies, Inc. (http://www.survivalstrategies.com), a consulting company for private practice health care professionals, located in Burbank, CA, he has helped more than 4,000 clients achieve real independence, flexibility, and the freedom to make their own decisions—the very qualities that attracted them to the business in the first place. He is the author of the book “Keys To Private Practice Success—Marketing and Management Skills They Didn’t Teach You In College”, http://www.survivalstrategies.com/email/kpps_book_promo.htm, the “Owner’s Manual” for private practice owners and other training materials.
A client wrote me a thank-you note echoing sentiments I had heard for decades - he “wished he’d known back then what he knows now.”
“PT school was more like a course designed to help me pass the license exam. We never really learned anything about Private Practice at all. In fact, we were encouraged to ‘get a job at a hospital’. ‘Administrative Training’ was a one-hour lecture titled, ‘Writing an Equipment Budget’. Since I am not a very good employee, I sort of had to work for myself until I met the professionals who helped me. From marketing, management and organization to billings and collections—I learned pretty much everything I really needed to know to run my business after I left school.” NC, PT, Seattle
Despite many years of clinical or professional training, most clinicians receive virtually nothing in the way of starting or running a practice, let alone the level of education or practical experience needed to ensure success. This “other half of your education” in private practice involves specific marketing, management and financial control skills indispensable to your ultimate success.
Some of your peers will never reach for the help they need. The sad fact is they are trapped by fixed ideas, myths, speculations or have accepted well-meaning advice that occurs from colleague-to-colleague or even during formal training. These are assumptions of how something should work or be, but not how they actually are. Such ideas are deceptive and need to be looked at head-on. You need to be able to spot these as traps or they will surely undermine your understanding of this subject.
If you want to maintain profits, peace of mind and see your practice succeed, pay heed to some common fixed ideas as they relate to the Keys to Practice Success—Patient Referral Development, PR and Marketing, Organization, and Cash Flow. In this article we will take up a “myth” of Organization and Practice Management followed by the truth of the matter, and then immediate “first aid” advice.
MYTH #2: ORGANIZATION AND PRACTICE MANAGEMENT:
“I’m not a manager, I’m a clinician. I’ll just hire someone to manage my practice.”
The Hard Fact: You are your own boss. You wear both clinic and management “hats” now.
Like it or not, if you own the practice, you are the manager. You just manage it well or manage it poorly or you dump your hat.
For example, it is a fatal mistake for a practice owner who is mystified or confused by one of the functions under him, to attempt to handle that function by hiring an “expert” and turning control of the area the owner does not fully understand to someone else.
The most successful practice owners in the U.S. can handle any and every marketing, clinical, management or financial job in their business. Staff know and respect this and a competent owner can’t have the wool pulled over his eyes.
When I see a clinic that just cannot grow beyond family-style management, I recognize that they are missing a fundamental law of building an organization. They do not know the difference between Phase I - beginning a new activity and Phase II - running an established activity. They never acquired the know-how to transition from one phase to the next, so stay stuck in Phase I forever.
Shackled with the fixed idea of “I’m not a manager”, the clinician who became an entrepreneur long enough to start a business doesn’t usually understand that there is a method to management and marketing, let alone how to train his staff in it! Recognizing and applying Phase I and Phase II are key in overcoming that.
Strategies for Organization and Management:
1. Make a long-term commitment to yourself and your practice to become as knowledgeable in the skills of management as you are as a clinician. Then ensure, year-by-year, that you receive formal instruction as a manager as well as continuing education in your clinical skills.
2. Draft an organizing board* for your clinic. Place stable, competent, trained people in executive positions.
3. Put your policies* in writing. Insist that each team member reads, understands and follows them. Key areas of policy in a private practice would specifically deal with patient care, how staff should express problems and solutions within the practice, a system for dealing with staff reviews and discipline. These points would be in addition to any standard policies required for insurance and privacy.
4. If you want to get out of Phase I on a post, it will be essential for you to set up a training program for staff. This would include formal instruction in the skills of their position, attendance at conventions and seminars, as well as in-servicing* on your particular policies and procedures. It is not “overkill” to have an in-service every week. The ideal arrangement is to have a dedicated, in-house space where you can oversee and assure on-going education.
A prospective client who was resisting an investment into training for her key executives asked, “But what if I train them and they leave?” So I asked, “What if you don’t train them and they stay?” She had no answer because that is what she’d been doing for years. Incidentally, it was that fixed idea which sat at the bottom of her 12 hour days, stress and practice chaos.
CONCLUSION
In the past, there was little alternative other than to learn things “the hard way”. Today practice owners, and even some of the brighter new graduates, understand that they can obtain the other half of their education by seeking help.
Glossary of special definitions--
In-servicing: Taking place or continuing while one is a full-time employee: in-service training workshops.
Organizing Board: A board that shows what functions are done in the org, the order they are done in, and who is responsible for getting them done.
Policy: Operational rules or guides for the organization which are not subject to change.
Mr. Schmiedeke is the nation’s foremost authority in the development of professional referrals, private practice management and marketing. As co-founder of Survival Strategies, Inc. (http://www.survivalstrategies.com), a consulting company for private practice health care professionals, located in Burbank, CA, he has helped more than 4,000 clients achieve real independence, flexibility, and the freedom to make their own decisions—the very qualities that attracted them to the business in the first place. He is the author of the book “Keys To Private Practice Success—Marketing and Management Skills They Didn’t Teach You In College”, http://www.survivalstrategies.com/email/kpps_book_promo.htm, the “Owner’s Manual” for private practice owners and other training materials.