Setting up your own private medical practice could be a chance to break away from the hustle and bustle of a hospital and work as a doctor on your own terms. While in some cases, it may be easier to run your own practice, there could also be a lot of added challenges that you shouldn’t overlook. Some people underestimate just how much responsibility is required to run a medical practice - even a very small one- which can lead to making various mistakes. Below are just some of the common blunders that people make when setting up their own medical practice.
Getting your budget wrong
There’s a huge list of expenses to cover when starting and running a medical practice. It’s important that you list all of these and accurately work out the cost of each individual expense. This ensures that you are able to seek out the right amount of funding - whether you borrow money or get help from investors - and that no cost is overlooked. Not getting your budget right could result in you having to scramble for extra funding at the last minute.
Not researching your competition
There could be other private clinics like yours operating in the same area. It’s important that you carefully research your competition beforehand so that you choose the right location (ideally not too close to another practice) and so that you can find a way to set yourself apart. Having a USP could be important. For example, if you’re setting up a dermatology practice and there is already one in the area that focuses heavily on treating acne and wrinkles, consider whether you would be better off focusing on conditions like psoriasis and lipomas.
Failing to invest in marketing
Every business, including medical practices, needs marketing so that patients are aware that it exists. Spare some funding to pour into aspects such as website design, SEO, social media marketing, and general advertising. Think about who your target audience is and work out the best ways to pinpoint this audience. You could consider hiring a medical marketing agency to handle this aspect.
Choosing the wrong software
Using the right software will help you to organize your business and make it more efficient. There are so many different types of medical software out there, so it’s important to spend time looking for the right one. For example, if you deal with urgent care cases, you may be better off looking into specific urgent care software rather than general medical practice software. On top of finding software for you and your employees to use, consider whether you could benefit from also adopting applications for patients to use - this could be useful for tasks like booking appointments and keeping track of treatment programs.
Taking on too much work yourself
A big mistake that first-time owners of medical practices make is taking on too much work themselves. If your background is as a doctor, you may not have any of the necessary business admin experience, and you could find yourself getting easily swamped by all of this work. This is why many medical practices will hire separate managers to handle the business side so that doctors can focus on the medical side. You may also want to hire a few assistants to help you. You may even want to consider hiring other experienced doctors who can take over your work so that you don’t have to work as many hours (this could be important if you’re starting a medical practice to give yourself a better work/life balance).
Hiring/outsourcing the wrong people
It’s important to spend time looking for the right people to hire and outsource. Ideally, you want staff with lots of experience to help you get the business off the ground - you don’t want to have to spend too much time training people up in the early days. When outsourcing tasks like accounting or marketing, make sure to choose companies with experience serving medical practices. Beyond these, consider important tertiary services which will need handling, like waste management for your practice. Outsourcing processes like this to a company offering delaware medical waste disposal (or elsewhere more relevant) is key so that your practice can run in a hygienic way without you taking on the cost of dealing with the waste yourself.