PRACTICE SUSTAINABILITY

By Shirley Harper

Every day we hear about numbers… number of fatalities from the Corona Virus, number of new cases, numbers of cases per country, unemployment numbers, and the list goes on and on! What we aren’t really hearing is the number of fatalities in business. How many small businesses have survived, how many have been lost during this “panic-demic.” Since we are in the Business of Health this is where I would like to focus your attention today.

Speaking with a friend over the weekend he mentioned a practitioner we both know who has had to close his doors permanently in the wake of Covid-19. It really got me thinking about how Dr. Harper has been able to keep our Clinic up, running, and actually making a profit since the lockdown. Two complete opposite ends of the spectrum how is it that one practice is able to not only survive but thrive and another withers and dies. And most importantly where does you practice fit in this scenario?

When we got the quarantine order we were forced to eliminate our second practitioner and lay off all staff members except our lead front desk person. We experienced a drastic decline in patients during the first 2 weeks as people were hesitant to go out and we were consciously spacing our patient’s appointments farther apart to avoid people sitting together in the reception area. That was our first couple weeks but since that time we are seeing more people everyday and Dr. Harper is busier than ever averaging 3-5 new patients each week as well as the regulars. Now that we are coming out of the quarantine we will be adding another part-time receptionist back into the mix. So how did we manage all of that? Well I believe the secret is that we had services that only depend on Dr. Harper, Chiropractic, injections, and DOT Physical exams. These things if setup properly only take him to accomplish, they are quick and easy to do without

assistance, the other really great tool we have is our PEMF machines. They are easy to operate require minimal setup and patients can be left unattended during treatment and feel better afterwards. The point here is all these things enable him to be a one man show completely independent of a support staff. The IV Jumpstarts have been a real boon to us also, as he can do one on a patient in a matter of 5-10 minutes and send them on their way. With the decrease of staff, we cut our overhead tremendously and became much more profitable in the process.

Our Colleague who closed his practice had a vastly different situation. His patient base was mainly referrals from other providers for complex IV therapies. He had a very lucrative practice until providers stopped referring patients. I don’t know what his staffing requirements were, however, I do know that it is incredibly easy to lose money on large IV practices that have large expensive inventory requirements with limited shelf life. As Dr. Brenden Cochran can tell you if you don’t know exactly what you are doing it is easy to lose your shirt on a large IV practice, even in the best of times. As the country began to lockdown the referrals for IV therapy disappeared. With no real patient base of his own our colleague had no one coming in, no other services to offer, and products expiring rapidly. Combine that with the situation in our country and there was just no recovering from those factors. I would direct each of you to look at your existing practice with an eye to operations without your current staff and with the services you currently offer. Do you provide services that you provide without assistance? Could you operate your office alone with just someone to answer phones and collect payments? How much of your practice is dependent on others? Do you provide therapeutic modalities that don’t require assistance? Now is the time to take a good hard look at exactly what you have to offer that will keep patients coming back and keep your doors open in the event of another shutdown!

Looking at The Business of Health and the Health of Business is what we will be doing during our video conference scheduled to launch in late August.  Stay tuned for updates on our agenda, our presenters and other detailed information about our event!