A Step-By-Step on Doubling the Value of Your Practice Without Seeing More Patients: A Guide To Modern Practice Management

By Hernan Rizo

A Step-by-Step on Doubling the Value of Your Practice Without Seeing More Patients – A Guide to Modern Practice Management- has everything you need to know to navigate your physician and dental career through today’s unparalleled business environment. Even after the pandemic, even after the harsh financial conditions some private practitioners have gone through lately, I can assure you, this is the most exciting and profitable time to be in private practice. You’ll learn how to increase profitability in your practice, enhance revenues, cut costs, optimize operations, all out of your current book of business. You’ll also learn how to value and groom your practice for sale and how to turn the tables on DSO’s and Private Equity Groups allowing you to keep most of the final, realized value of your practice. This is the culmination of 20 years of the CFO Group’s experience working with private practitioners.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The CFO Group USA
• Release date: Aug 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662917691

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I have worked with Private Practitioners, dentists and physicians, and Private Equity Groups for most of my 20-year career as a professional Chief Financial Officer. I have worked in dozens of healthcare organizations of all sizes, all stages of their life cycles and all forms of business conditions, from rapid growth to declining revenues and even bankruptcies.

Even after the pandemic, even after the harsh financial conditions that some private practitioners have gone through lately, I can assure you, this is the most exciting and profitable time to be in private practice.

DSOs and PEGs are relatively newcomers in our industry. They are taking it by storm alleging transformation, 21st century management skills and new capital in ways the healthcare industry has never seen before. Unfortunately, they are also keeping more than 60% of the final, realized, value of private practices, leaving doctors with nothing but crumbs.

Forget about the noise generated by so many practices selling out to these institutional investors for pennies on the dollar. I will guide you, step by step, on doubling the value of your practice without seeing more patients.

We will explore How to modernize, optimize, and propel your practice using Modern Practice Management (MPM) and its four basic components:

- Principles

- Foundations to Growing your Practice

- Professionalization of your Practice

- Build-Sell-Repeat

We will then look into our Revenue Enhancements modules, all profit centers hidden in plain sight, learned from over 150 years of combined best practices experience from our management team:

- Exploring the Limits of Revenue Cycle Management

- Mastering Digital Marketing

- The 'golden ticket' to Patient Financing

- Dent2Med and Other Cross-Coding Options

- Adding Clinical Trials

- Understanding Capitated Business

- Other Sources of Revenues

We will then answer questions all Private Practitioners have asked themselves for decades:

- When it's time to Cut Cost in Your Practice

- Minimizing the Cash Effects of Loans and Taxes

- Alternatives and Other Faster Ways of Adding Value to Your Practice

- The Fair Market Value (FMV) of Your Practice

- Selling Your Practice

Finally, we’ll explain how to Turn the Tables on DSOs and Private Equity Groups and keep the majority of the final, realized, value of your practice.

Even though this book mainly focuses on physicians and dentists, everything you’ll learn applies to private practitioners in all industries. We’ll help you focus on your practices’ growth and separate yourself from the competition by running your business as a corporation.

To reach out, you can do so via these emails: [e-mail] or [e-mail]. I would love to hear from you.

CHAPTER 1: STEP 1

-HOW TO MODERNIZE, OPTIMIZE, AND PROPEL YOUR PRACTICE USING MODERN PRACTICE MANAGEMENT (MPM)-

Modern Practice Management (MPM) is responsible for everything that occurs during a patient encounter, besides examination. From attracting new patients, to organizing and optimizing patient flow, office workflows, employees, systems, procedures, reporting, controls and tasks.

The objective of MPM is to allow the doctor to remain focused on treating patients by taking the burden of running the office out of his/her hands while keeping everything still in control by the private practitioner. The objective is to strike a delicate balance between keeping the doctor always informed and in control, while executing these tasks with autonomy and proficiency. This is where an experienced Practice Manager or COO comes into play.

There are four basic components of MPM:

- Principles

- Foundations

- Professionalization

- Build-Sell-Repeat

PRINCIPLES OF MODERN PRACTICE MANAGEMENT

Modern practice management is based on several principles which guide how it is carried out. All are focused on helping you transform your small business habits into successful corporate mandates. Here are the principles of Modern Practice Management:

- Patient Service Excellence

- Normalization

- Specialization of tasks and functions

- Alignment of efforts and goals

- Planning and controls

- Reward employees for success

PATIENT SERVICE EXCELLENCE

With over 230,000 physician and 182,000 dental practices in the US, why would patients keep coming back to yours? Is it the service you provide or simply convenience? In todays’ digitally informed, consumer-centric, world, without exceptional patient experience, your practice has no place in it. If you want to build a successful practice that lasts through time, you cannot base the future of your business on convenience. You need to attract patients who will wait days for your services.

Providing an excellent patient experience is the number one priority of modern practice management. Without this, nothing else is possible. So many private practitioners are focused on the necessary changes to be made in marketing and management, all the new things we must master and pay attention to that we forget one of the most important key points. The most significant driver of change in today’s private practice is not any of the above, it's the way buying professional services is changing. With patients now in charge of their purchasing journey, the most important marketing element still left in our control is patient experience. Take customer service very seriously. If your practice involves employees, ensure they are trained and take patient service equally seriously.

Here are a few steps on how to improve your patient experience:

- Make sure all your employees can make a good first impression. This is even more important for front-office employees responsible for greeting patients over the phone or upon their arrival in the waiting room. Doesn’t matter the quality of their work, if you can’t trust them when dealing with your patients, they’re not a good fit for your organization.

- Keep your commitments. If you or your staff says, I will get back to you today, make sure it gets done. Even if you don’t have the answer, a quick call to let patients know you are still working on it is always best. Keep your promises, no matter how small or complex they are.

- Show understanding and gratitude to your patients. Thank customers in a meaningful and thoughtful manner on every interaction. Listen to them, take notes on their concerns and pains, make sure they understand you’re there to solve their problems. Always remember patients have other options besides you for your services, understand their needs and be grateful for having selected you as their healthcare provider. Assure your employees share this principle.

- Provide robust and consistent training. Great patient service isn’t all common sense, or there would be more of it. Private Practitioners should find it beneficial to provide their staff with healthcare specific customer service training and follow-up updates as needed. A failed employee, or a failed interaction between an employee and one of your patients, is at least 50% your fault.

- Listen and take action when your patients complain. Deal with every complaint as an opportunity to build a lifetime of loyalty from a patient. Make sure you listen to the complaint, check the validity, take action to resolve it, and then let the patient know how it was resolved. Always assume the patient is telling the truth. Follow up with the patient on his/her complaint until the issue is fully resolved. Sharing this with them via a phone call, will heal most wounds.

- Always thrive to exceed your patients’ expectations. It is always better to under promise and overdeliver than vice versa. Make sure you and your team are meeting your patients' needs, then make an effort to exceed them by paying close attention to every detail in the delivery of your services. Cross all T’s and dot all I’s when it comes to patient service excellence.

- Simplify your patient-centric processes. Make the experience at your front office as easy as possible with minimal wait times, maximum comfort, and amenities such as tv, coffee, tea, and water, when possible. Also consider patients' flow through the clinic to ensure it is easy to navigate, presentable, and always, accompanied by one of your employees.

- Be open to mistakes and always have a plan for them. Forgot to call a patient back? Overbooked your schedule? Running a little late? Have controls in place to catch mistakes, be honest, apologize sincerely, and offer options to repair the damage.

- Your patients are the reason you’re in private practice. Would you have a practice without them? You should know who your patients are, why they come to see you, understand their problems and be sure they receive the best experience from your entire staff. Have your front-office greet and follow up with patients properly, that goes a long way in making a patient feel welcome.

- Treat your employees like family. If you treat your employees with great respect and dignity, they will be more equipped to model that for your patients. Make it hard for them to let you down.

- Lead by example. Treat your patients the way you’d like to be treated and let employees see that. They’ll appreciate how YOU treat patients, so everything besides patient service excellence will quickly become unacceptable.

NORMALIZATION

Modern Practice Management aims to minimize variances from standards around inputs, outputs, and service methods. This will further help establish regularity and predictability in operations. Don't try to make all your services, employees, processes, controls and results perfect right away. Try instead to get one patient flow, from reception to exit, perfect today. Same for employees and processes; work with reception, office management, or billing this week. Work with your team to get one perfectly done, set the standard and expectations, then repeat.

SPECIALIZATION OF TASKS AND FUNCTIONS

This can be used in situations where a task is carried out by an individual or group of employees together in modular organizational units, like your billing process. Specialization must create duties, expectations, responsibilities, and tasks for each individual rather than just allowing employees to figure it out based on their experience. This reduces complexity of job expectations, accelerates learning, and improves employee retention. In the end, tasks are done in less time and more efficiently, making you more money.

ALIGNMENT OF EFFORTS AND GOALS

Goal alignment simply has to do with establishing clear-cut purposes using clearly stated goals and objectives. It also involves the use of supporting metrices to measure outcomes. Find a way to measure each employees’ role in your organization and ultimate goals on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. Things like patient count, satisfied customers, bills processed, rejected bills, new clients, average bill, waiting times, etc., are Key Performance Indications (KPIs) that every organization must have. They not only set up expectations, but also provide employees and management an incredibly valuable tool to measure performance and efficiency. Contrary to popular belief, employees actually prefer an environment where rules are clear and their performance is easily evaluated through a transparent set of guidelines. There is no uncertainty as they know what to do to complete their tasks and the terms of such tasks.

PLANNING AND CONTROLS

This includes forecast demand, budgets, capital and personnel resources, and schedule of tasks. Each of these items are tracked and monitored so that tasks are carried out more efficiently as plans can be changed if they aren't working out. This is a particularly important key to the success for your business. Financial Planning and Analysis in every corporation helps your business stay ahead of problems. A carefully planned annual and quarterly budget helps you measure your performance through time, helps you set patient and hours worked goals, and most importantly, helps you take corrective actions when numbers don't line up with your plan. If your plans are not in writing and shared with all your organization, they’re nothing