As you start your path on establishing your own medical practice you will be met with numerous obstacles that you will have to overcome. Starting a practice means setting up your own business from scratch, it takes a lot more than just medical knowledge to do this. Not only do you need to set your practice in the physical world but also digital. All of which can be an overwhelming experience for any medical professional.
Whether you’ve already embarked on the path to establishing a medical practice or are thinking about it, the following challenges are something you should consider. Being prepared to tackle these challenges from the start can help your medical practice flourish and grow.
Challenge 1: Hiring employees
Hiring employees is a task on its own but it gets even tougher when you want to make sure you hire good employees. For a medical practice to grow, you need qualified and professional employees. From your administration staff to other medical professionals within your practice. The hiring process can be time-consuming and costly. Therefore, you want to ensure that employees you hire stay for the long run as a high turnover can mean more time lost and expenses.
It is important you have the right individuals in place for each position within your practice. The team you gather is an investment, they will essentially determine the growth of your practice. Good employees have a positive impact and reflect well for your medical practice, not just providing exceptions medical care but also ensuring patients get the best experience.
To ensure you get good employees, you need to have a comprehensive hiring process in place. You first need to do your research and figure out exactly what skills and responsibilities are for each position you have available. Be sure to highlight this when posting the job and shortlist those candidates that fit the requirements set for the position. During the interview process be very specific with your questions, making them relevant for the position. To get a better idea about the candidate’s character, ask for up to 3 references and be sure to call them up.
Challenge 2: Getting new patients and retaining them
Like with any business, as your practice starts off, attracting patients will be one of the biggest challenges. It also has a major impact on how much growth your practice experiences since without patients your practice won’t grow.
One of the biggest challenges of attracting patients is to pull them away from their current medical care provider. Most of whom are already comfortable with the providers they go to. In order to attract them, you need to make your practice not only innovative but also give them a sense of trust, show them that you care about their health.
To attract new patients, it all starts with figuring out who your ideal patients are. Most practices make the mistake of marketing to the general public when they can be more specific and attract more clients. Think of it as key account marketing, know your ideal customer base and target them with specific messages. You can have different messages for different segments of your target audience so in this way you are spreading your message to a wider audience.
The best way to reach as many people as possible is to have a strong online presence. This means, getting a website and having a strong social media presence. You can easily engage with both new and existing patients on these platform providing them with quick services by answering any questions they may have and setting up appointments without the need for them to call you. Making their overall experience much more positive.
Challenge 3: Cash flow
Starting your own medical practice requires a lot of finances. It can be very tough to do so all on your own. You need to learn how to manage the limited funds you have otherwise you will burn through it without even getting your practice off the ground. Therefore, before you embark on your path, you need to make sure you have enough money saved up to see the journey through. Think about the infrastructure from the office space to the various machinery you will need, employees, marketing activities, and so on. These are all expenses you will need to incur from the get-go.
In order to be prepared, you need a financial management plan prior to starting your practice. This will help you plan out and budget for all the expenses from the start.
Conclusion
For any medical practice to grow and be successful, management needs to overcome the challenges listed above. These challenges don’t have anything to do with the medical field itself but revolve more around business and management. Which is why a lot of medical professionals that set out to establish their own practice tend to fail. Overcoming these challenges will be the difference between you wondering if you should sell a medical practice or becoming a success.
