Doctors are trained in medicine, not business.
Unfortunately, that’s not good enough in today’s practice environment. If revenue is going down and your hours increasing, it’s time to find out why. Chances are, it’s because of one or more of these reasons.
topics: primary care, business
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The article completely fails to manage payor mix where you are seeing Medicaid that pays 60% of Medicare and that your practice is more than 50% government payors. Further that your managed care contracts reimbursement has continually falling so that no your Medicare patients pay better than you Blue Cross, Cigna, Aetna, Humana, and always UHC.
I agree. The failure to mention that is a symptom of the biggest reasons, other than expenses out of control that primary care practices fail to thrive: A failure to have a robust sense of entitlement to be paid by your patients for the value of your service. Many primary care docs have a martyr complex, others simply believe that healthcare is a right. If they harbor the latter beliefs, they either need to get in touch with the inner hypocrite or go to work for a public clinic–they will not keep a private practice operating on that principle.