7 Things You Need to Know About Starting a Medical Practice

If you are starting a new medical practice, there a few things we think you should know:

1.  You are going to need more than a “checklist”.

Please stop searching for one :) Trust us.  It’s not enough. 

2.  You need an experienced professional to help guide you.

Starting a medical practice is a very involved process and you don’t want to leave anything to chance. There are many aspects to a practice start-up like accounting, legal, staffing, regulatory, real estate, marketing, billing…..you get the idea.  The money you will spend hiring an expert will pay off exponentially in the end.  Need a good practice start-up consultant? Ask us. We work with some great ones!

3.  Hire a staff that truly enjoys working with the public.

If you ever have the chance to look at a provider’s reviews online, you may notice most of the reviews are not even about the provider. They are usually about the treatment they received from the staff, wait times, or billing complaints.  It’s important to hire staff with the appropriate experience and qualifications, but it is equally as important to hire people who are upbeat, friendly, and have a compassionate attitude towards patients.  Your staff can make or break your practice.  Staff wisely.

4.  Credentialing will take longer than you expect.

Trust us. It just will.  We might sound like a Farmers Insurance commercial here, but we could also say that we “know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two”.  Credentialing is a very detailed process and, depending on the time of year, it can also be an extended process.  Just like tax season, credentialing has seasons also.  The keys to being successful with credentialing are:

• Hire a pro.  This is definitely not something you want to tackle on your own. The risk is not worth it to try to do it yourself. Plus, let's be honest - do you really have the time? The average credentialing application can take over an hour to complete and that doesn't include the time spent communicating with the health plans.
• Provide your credentialing consultant with every last document and detail you can.  Payors will require documents such as licenses, DEAs, mal-practice certificates, CLIA certificates, CME credits, and more.  Every single day you delay in providing these documents could mean significant delays on the back-end. Some payors have credentialing committees that meet only once a month to approve providers. So, if your information is not complete and you miss the deadline, it could cost you an extra month to become a participating provider.
• Make sure your consultant is staying in contact with the payers.  You should be receiving status updates every couple of weeks from your consultant. If not, ask for them. The squeaky wheel always gets the grease!  Assume nothing. No news is not necessarily good news.  Stay in touch with your credentialing consultant frequently.  We can’t stress this enough.
• Need a good credentialing consultant? Ask us. We know a few of those too!

5. Doing a construction build-out? This may take longer than expected also.

It’s not uncommon for build-outs to take a little more time than originally quoted.  In fact, we see this more often than not.  Our advice:  Prepare for the worst and hope for the best!

6. You WILL question your sanity and your decision to go into private practice, more than once.

We’ve been involved in marketing hundreds of practice start-ups over the years.   It’s normal to feel anxious and question your decision to make this leap in to private practice.  The good news is that you are on the road to autonomy and will soon be enjoying the fruits of your labor and building relationships with patients that will last a lifetime!  It’s worth it in the end.  We’ve seen the end results.  Hang in there. It gets easier!

7.  If you build it, they will come. Right? Not necessarily.  You need to market your practice!

Often overlooked, marketing a new practice is imperative. It is a business and it needs to be marketed like any other business.  We recommend working with an agency that understands medical practices and how to market them (cough, cough, that would be us.) :)  Marketing a medical practice is very different from marketing any other type of business, however. Not only are there privacy considerations, but physicians don’t usually want to be promoted in the same way a traditional business is advertised.   Make sure you have adequately budgeted for marketing in your start-up funding process.  If you need help determining what your marketing budget should be, contact us for a free consultation.