The Basics of a Successful Practice - Practice Tips 1

The 8 basic principles:

1. Practice evidence based medicine - it’s not just better, it is easier and cheaper

2. Develop and/or maintain good bedside manners: listen, teach, learn how to say the most important things in a short time and hand out leaflets as reinforcement and reminder

3. Educate your patients well

4. Do as much in your own office as possible, you save time and you earn the
facility fee for procedures

5. Market your practice efficiently, economically and ethically and on the Internet

6. Have a great office staff and make sure their morale is good

7. Document and bill well

8. In 2006/7 still be cautious about EMR


The basic principles for financial success in an ObGyn practice:

The big idea, the general plan, the overall strategy for a financially successful practice is:

Do as much in the office as possible, do as many diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in the office. This way you get paid for the procedure plus you receive the facility fee.

You also save yourself the wasted time that it takes to change over in the OR.

Spend as much time your office as possible, since it is YOUR office and you are in command and you can streamline all procedures to maximum efficiency. I heard it again and again from successful colleagues: if you can work most of the time in the office and avoid going to the hospital, you earn more.

Should you have to go to the OR, then try not to have block time, but try to get the first slot in the OR in the morning for one procedure. This way you avoid the loss of time involved with changing patients in the operating room.

Do your surgeries on your on-call weekends, where you can't do much else anyway or have to be at the hospital anyway. Many hospitals allow scheduled surgeries on Saturdays.

It may be worth it to combine procedures, such as hysteroscopy and saline infusion sonography.

Learn coding well to maximize your reimbursement, attend courses, listen to your colleagues, and remember - the HMOs are using sophisticated, expensive, highly specialized software to aggressively downgrade your reimbursements no matter what you do.
Visit an ACOG coding and billing course (one of those courses that are always sold out)

Market your practice.
Read the book by Neil Baum and Gretchen Henkel "Market Your Practice", $ 89. This book has all the marketing advice you will ever need, just follow his advice.
Read the books by Jay Levinson on Guerilla Marketing, and you will be inspired.
Read the book by Michael Port "Book Yourself Solid" - which inspires you to think like a marketer.
You might even consider hiring a professional marketer for developing a marketing plan and for carrying it out.