MY PRACTICE CEO

I don’t know of anything else available to physicians today that is like My Practice CEO. It was actually born out of the headaches and frustrations I faced in doing one-on-one coaching with my most difficult physician clients.

These clients were not difficult to work with because they were undermining or sabotaging our process – quite the opposite, they were extremely hungry for success. They were simply overwhelmed and unable to implement many of the changes designed to enhance their revenues.

What did these “difficult” clients have in common? They had:

• High staff turnover

• A culture of chaos in their practice

• Low patient retention rates

• A reputation with patients for having an unprofessional staff

• High stress levels at work, leading some to want to avoid coming on to the office

• Poor customer service

• Poor cash flow

• An inefficient billing process

• Little to no managerial oversight

• Little to no marketing

• No practice budget or regular review of practice financials

• And the #1 commonality to these “difficult” practices… Everything had to go through the physician, nothing worked on “autopilot”

Essentially these practices were like codependent relationships – same problems each day with nothing new or exciting happening to improve things. The physician felt trapped and isolated, the staff feared the emotional overreactions of the doctor and it felt like you stepped in quicksand every time you walked in the door.

How do you help a practice like this?

As I struggled with the answer over months and even years, an insight began to appear: There can be no growth in the practice without greater infrastructure. The processes in the practice had to be either systemized or outsourced. The physician had to be given editorial input as to how the processes would look but the redesign and the training had to be given to my team or it just would not get done.

As Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” You need fresh thinking to build past the existing constraints in your practice. You need a team to come in – like you see on reality television where they clean up a junky cluttered house – and redesign the systems, one at a time, starting with the ones that are the most “broken”.

A Key Consideration

At the beginning of this article, I said “My Practice CEO” was unique. Of course there are a lot of practice management firms that promise to do exactly what I’m describing here – fix the mess so the doctor can just see patients. In my 20 year career as a doctor, I have worked for many of these management companies but none have owned up to the promise of fixing the mess in a substantive manner.

However, many of them take control of the practice, including the equity and the cash flow. The time when a physician is most likely to abdicate control of their practice is when they are in a state of chaos. Then almost anything seems better than their current reality. Many physicians I speak to that have gone to work for the large management companies are really not happy with their choice to do so.

That is why we don’t try to take the equity or the autonomy away from our clients. You still own 100% of your practice, you control the cash flow and you have the final say in all key management decisions. Let’s face it… most physicians are control freaks, that’s why we went into this profession in the first place, so we could make a difference. As a physician and control freak, I know this all too well.

That’s why I would never, ever, ever advocate handing your practice over to some guru without retaining some autonomy of management. We’re here to help you, not to hijack your practice from underneath you.
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What We Do:

We look at every process within your practice as it relates to operational efficiency, clinical quality indicators and revenue optimization. It is a 3 to 5 year process and we work it one system at a time.

We break down each process in your practice. We begin with five major categories:

• Operations

• Marketing

• Billing and Coding

• IT and Compliance

• Clinical performance indicators

We then apply metrics to each of these areas to determine where we need to go deeper. After that we build the plan for process improvement, bring it to the physician-owner for their input and set about the process redesign while you continue to actively practice.

We find typically that there is one key constraint in the practice that is the limiting step for growth in the practice. Once overcome, efficiency goes up, revenue goes up and stress goes down. And then, guess what happens? We identify the next key constraint. And then we work on that for a while until that is resolved and then we find another and another.

Somewhere after about the fourth or fifth process redesign we start to see some pretty amazing changes. We start to see a culture shift – a change in the way doctors, staff and patients see and appreciate the practice. It becomes (not to be corny) a labor of love, not just some mundane effort pay the bills.

It’s a lot of work and oh boy is it worth it.

If you think this might be right for your practice, leave your contact info in the form below and one of our practice CEOs will contact you to discuss your unique situation.

I invite you to consider this opportunity and as you do, please keep the following question in mind. Is it worth it for you to fall in love with practicing medicine again? If the answer is yes, I think you know what to do next. We await your call and look forward to working with you.

Call me at 800-297-0711

Sincerely,