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Managing, marketing your practice requires leadership and foresight
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 Richard L. Lindstrom |
Ours can be a fiercely competitive and demanding field, and the pressure does not show any signs of relenting any time soon.
For this reason, Ocular Surgery News has brought together some of the top practice management, marketing and regulatory specialists to address the issues most relevant to you and how you practice today.
Ophthalmology ‘megatrends’
As John B. Pinto, OSN Practice Management Section Editor, writes in his “Megatrends” update (See article in regular issue), hard times ahead will require every ophthalmologist to become a smarter, better-educated business person.
“The most efficient ophthalmologists have markedly increased their clinical volumes. In the future, the concept of 'hyper-volume' practices will continue to grow, with ambitious doctors seeing 80 or more patient encounters per day,” he writes. “This is an entirely different service model to the patient and often entails an expansion of the doctor’s workday and work week to cover largely fixed costs.”
We are facing declining reimbursements, more demanding and better-educated patients, increased government regulation and medicolegal risk requiring better documentation, and mounting pressure from managed care.
Each article in this supplement was submitted with these challenges in mind. Take a look at the table of contents, and you will find something that speaks directly to your needs or the needs of your practice administrator.
Business principles
Following basic business principles can help maximize profits and efficiency and cut out the waste that can bog a practice down.
Bruce S. Maller explains how to incorporate basic business principles into your practice, while Derek A. Preece, MBA, discusses how to conquer patient flow problems and, in another article, enhance employee performance.
In another article, Gregory S. Brinton, MD, describes what he views as the effective staff leadership principles essential for your practice’s image and performance.
Michael J. Parshall discusses the ins and outs of valuing your practice, ASC or ancillary service.
Likewise, Jim Hamlett, the owner of an appraisal service, writes about how knowing the value of your assets can help grow your business and how owners should buy and maintain equipment with an eye to its long-term value.
Bob Tilley, a practice administrator in Florida, explains how a shift in optical shop philosophy can improve your patients’ experience and boost your bottom line.
Looking ahead
Effective practice management also entails keeping an eye to the future, so a handful of articles address proper planning.
OSN Financial Correspondent Kenneth R. Rudzinski, CFP, CLU, ChFC, CASL, lays out the basics of income planning to prevent financial disasters in the future and, separately, how to choose the right retirement plan for you and your practice.
On a similar note, R. Lee Harman, MD, FACS, and Barbara C. Aliaga discuss the preparation needed to sell one's practice. Offering a legal perspective, Jeffrey B. Sansweet, JD, discusses how one can effectively negotiate and plan for a partnership deal.
Another legal perspective comes from Robert A. Wade, JD, who advises on how to best structure a subspecialist agreement to avoid business and legal pitfalls.
Regulatory, legal problems
Finally, all the business acumen and marketing savvy in the world cannot protect you if you violate the law or regulations.
Two articles seek to address the most important elements of avoiding regulatory or legal hassles.
First, OSN Legal/Regulatory Section Editor Alan E. Reider, JD, lays out the top 10 missteps that can results in serious consequences for the physician but are easily avoided.
And, finally OSN Practice Management Section Member Riva Lee Asbell, discusses the challenges practices face when attempting to navigate billing for extra charges associated with standard cataract surgery involving the insertion of a non-presbyopia-correcting IOL.
On all these fronts, the key to success is continuous education, honest practice benchmarking and effective efforts to improve on practice management and solve the problems as they emerge. The only constant for the future will be change, and the successful ophthalmologist will recognize change and adapt to it in a timely fashion.