Practice Tip 7 – Control

ARE YOU IN CONTROL OF YOUR PRACTICE…
OR DOES IT CONTROL YOU?

Good question, right? As private practice owners we all paid the price of admission and signed up for success. Or so we thought. Many times stress, burn out, low morale, not enough business, too much business, working too many hours, low profit etc… quickly moved in .

These are all signs of poor control. The problem (and solution) comes down to this seemingly simple law: Control is the ability to either speed something up, keep it the same, or slow it down. It’s pro-active in it’s approach. With this in mind, get the idea that you either control something (like driving a car), or like a passenger it controls you. So how does this relate to your practice?

For starters, very few of us really know how to first compile objective data to diagnose the condition of any area in our practice and then use this data to proactively speed an area up or slow it down. For example, early on I kept going to my accountant with the monthly statements and asking “This data is interesting but what can I do with it?”. He had no practical solutions. But as clinicians we naturally think this way, right? We compile subjective and objective patient data, make an assessment (diagnosis or tentative diagnosis) and then proceed to make a proactive treatment plan to improve the condition of the patient.

So how about doing this with your practice?
Here’s a place to start:

Pick some basic objective things to track over time
- monthly New Patients and Client Visits are good ones to start with (Note: just like your patients, a practice has different systems that work together. Each can and should be monitored like you monitor the heart rate, the white count etc… of a patient).

Graph these out to develop your Management Dashboard
- just like in your car - so you can visually see the direction these areas are heading.

Keep it up to date
...and develop your external and internal marketing plans as tools to use to pro-actively influence the areas you are tracking. Over time you should feel more and more in control.

This is the foundation of good practice management.
Questions? Give me a call.