A question was asked about setting up the Acupuncture clinics in the military. I was on active duty status and the clinics were run/funded by the Air Force. My biggest challenges had more to do with bureaucracy and implementing something that didn't exist. This all started as a spear head project from the Surgeon General of the Air Force.
Mistakes I made setting up my practice in the civilian sector.
1) Let the experts do their jobs.
I tried to be an expert in too many areas. I am an acupuncturist. Before that in the Air Force I was a teacher, and EMT/Combat Medic, and a neurodiagnostic technologist. However, I have never been an accountant, a book keeper, or an insurance specialist. I wasted so much valuable time, money and effort not paying other people to do what they do well.
2) I tried to be everything to everyone.
In the beginning all of my speaking to potential patients, physicians, and anyone who would listen was too broad. I was not listening enough to what people wanted to know about acupuncture. Instead I was pushing hard for them to understand that acupuncture is good for everything from acne to xerostomia. Bottom line by talking too much and not listening enough I lost people by giving them too much information. The fear was that I wasn't going to cover enough ground and not going to say something that the person would find valuable.
3) Not accepting insurance sooner.
I started as a cash practice because I could not get a handle on the whole insurance thing. Accepting insurance literally doubled my practice and continues to bring new patients because I'm now on the Blue Cross site as a provider that accepts Blue Cross insurance.
I'm in the middle of an audit from Blue Cross right now. It really is going well and I am looking at this as an opportunity to teach the insurance companies about what we are and what we do. They have been reviewing my records and have not found any glaring mistakes so now they are coming for an office visit.
I'll keep you posted on how it goes.
4) Trying what had failed for others.
Many of my peers have tried things like writing their own advertisements and brochures with limited to no success. Somehow I got the idea in my head that I was going to succeed where they had failed. In truth I failed where they did as well. The simple reason is that I wrote my material thinking like an acupuncturist. Acupuncture Media Works puts out some great educational material that I say is pretty effective at reaching the average person.
5) Getting a website built by Yellowpages.
If you are going to have a website then please, please, please, get it done by someone local that you can go talk to face to face. If the site looks terrible potential customers do not see it as a reflection on the web designer they see it as a reflection of you.
It may or may not be fair but we can and do judge people by the way they run their business. The more you stretch yourself out and take yourself out of your area of expertise the more chances you have to come across as less than professional. This translates to a message in the potential patients mind that "this person may not know what they are doing."
Remedies to these mistakes:
1) Find people you who are expert in the fields you need and hire them. Many professionals like accountants have a sliding scale based on how much work you represent. By paying the experts you not only get the tasks done right the first time. You also get the gifts of your time, focus, an energy back so that you can be the expert in acupuncture.
2) Yes acupuncture is a complete healing system that can help many health concerns. However, by trying to tell every potential patient everything that acupuncture can do is like asking them to drink from a fire hydrant. Listen more than you speak and focus on what concerns the person in front of you. When giving a talk focus on one subject like headaches.
3) Get a billing specialist and sign up for insurance. Remember to bill for only what you have written in your notes. If it's not in your notes it did not happen and you cannot bill insurance. Having said that the insurance companies are not bad. They just really don't have a clue about who we are or what we do. By reaching out to them to educate them we can further show our patients and communities at large that we have legitimate place in the health care community.
4) If everyone else has failed at a task ask them why and how they failed. Then don't make your attempt look just like theirs.
5) Support your local community and have a local person build your website. This is a great way to start networking.
2 comments:
From our experience in our practice, I can say you hit the nails right on their heads.
Work to your strengths and hire to your weaknesses. Get an accountant if you are not one. Never wrote advertisements? Don't start now: concentrate on speaking and building and treating and let someone else do the writing.
I help manage a practice with my wife who is an OMD. before entering healthcare, I was a teacher for many many years. I have been, and still am, a writer. STILL, when it came to ad copy, I had to learn the ropes and do my reading before I was effective.
Our website, as you suggest in your blog, was done by a local professional who builds commercial websites. It was done for barter, true, but I looked for a professional with experience in the type of site we needed, not just anyone who could build a site.
My wife practiced for two years before I joined in. She tried to get me to do so earlier but I could not see leaving my safe, stable income.
Finally, she convinced me it would be ok and I retired early. Within a month we had managed some leaps she, on her own, could not handle on her own.
Mind you, this was not because of inability. She is amazing. It was exhaustion. A one-person office is exhausting.
She was taking the money, billing the insurance, setting the appointments, handling the phonecalls and cleaning the cupping set all while treating patients.
Once these tasks were removed, the office started to bustle. In a month, we had moved to the office we wanted.
In two months, our practice tripled.
The website she insisted (sorry dear, but it is true) would be of little use other than to send people to for a handy map of our location, has been bringing people in steadily. The web is how people find services today. Don't skimp on your website. People have chosen us based fully on the strengh of our website over others. Some just on the Doc's bio alone.
And the things I cannot do? I don't learn them, Oh NO! We hired a biller for insurance. Many in our area consider insurance not worth taking. We have tired of telling them differently. Now we just take their insurance patients while they all fight for the same segment of the already over-tapped New Age market.
Quite soon we will outgrow a two-person office as well and have already added a massage therapist.
As you stated, management is everything. It does not matter how good you are if people don't know you exist, if you spend your time fighting with your accounting, if your doors can't remain open.
As a profession, if you all do this right more people will find you and the more people who do, and are happy, the more the profession will grow.
And that does not mean compromising. We don't have to take on a chiropractic model to do well. We can do well and do it the way we feel is right, true and in the best interest of our patients.
Having a Doc who can fully concentrate on patient care knowing the rest is taken care of is a good place to start.
Adam
www.adamusatlarge.blogspot.com
Thanks for the response Adam.
Good to know that I'm not all by myself. That is why I'm doing this because I think there are many, many more practitioners in the same situation.
Please check out www.acupunctureeconomics.ning.com
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