For private healthcare practice owners, “life is a jungle sometimes” rings particularly true. Maybe not as extreme as Jurassic Park, …but close some days.
As a professional, you probably did not anticipate the amount of business acumen and skills you would need to have to run a fabulous practice and meet all your goals, financial and otherwise. You probably also did not predict a pandemic, inflation and a recession as barriers that you would have to overcome just to stay alive.
Today’s Practice Jungle
The most formidable challenges facing you today are:
- finding and keeping good staff (where are they hiding?);
- the relentless rise in operational expenses, which are significantly eating into profits;
- the patients are more cautious about spending money as inflation has bitten into their income and expenses ratio too, with an impending and perhaps inevitable recession looming;
- the cost of constantly evolving technology and the training courses required to keep up with the advances; and,
- for incorporated practitioners, the new capital gains tax on your profits that was 50% and has gone up to 67% as of June 25th, 2024.
How to Navigate through this Jungle
Is the answer to all of the above to raise your fees and everything will go away? The answer is an obvious “no” in most cases, unless you are under the fee guide for your profession. Practices are forced to absorb these costs, as passing them entirely onto patients could make healthcare services unaffordable for many. This delicate balance between maintaining affordability and covering costs is a constant struggle.
Jungle Warfare Tactics
With regard to staffing issues, there are a number of solutions:
- enhanced hiring methodologies and tools to find those awesome candidates hiding in the jungle;
- better training for your staff for maximum productivity and efficiency;
- a well-trained executive/CEO to guide and inspire the team to rise above the jungle;
- forget raises, and institute a perfect bonus system for increased incentive to inspire peak performance by all staff;
- systems and structure streamlined to help the team excel in their performance;
- make sure that all staff and providers are thoroughly trained on shopper handlings (at the front end) and treatment presentations so patients go for the best you can deliver, etc.
Survival of the Fittest
In this jungle of financial pressures, healthcare providers must adopt strategic measures to survive and thrive:
- look at every aspect of the practice for opportunities to increase the quality of service to your patients.
- explore alternative revenue streams, such as offering ancillary services to diversify income sources.
- look for clinging vines in the jungle that can be trimmed back.
- reduce unnecessary paperwork and ensure your software is up to speed.
- recover those patients or clients who have gotten lost in the jungle somewhere and bring them back into the practice.
- Make your recall/recare system be 100% effective.
- upgrade your marketing efforts in both the traditional methods as well as getting a better result from your online marketing.
Hire a Jungle Guide
Ultimately, while the challenges are significant, the resilient and adaptive healthcare practice owners will seek out competent executive trainers and coaches to upscale their management skills to help them navigate successfully through these times.
Just as in a jungle, survival requires agility, resourcefulness, and a constant readiness to adapt to ever-changing conditions. … And maybe, just maybe, a good sense of humour and an awesome consulting company who has helped thousands of practitioners rise above the jungle during recessions of the past.
