Tashiba Williams - How to Successfully Open and Grow Your Own Primary Care Practice!

2021 Tashiba Williams

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-09-837352-8

Should You Open Your Own Practice?

In many states Nurse Practitioners can open their own practices. Starting your own primary care practice is an exciting way of taking your medical practice into your own hands. This industry can be challenging and complicated. For your medical practice to be successful, you must have a clear detailed plan to keep things moving on schedule. This book will provide you with step-by-step tools that can help you start and grow your medical practice. First find your passion. Secondly ask yourself is this something you really can do. Opening your own practice takes dedication, time and guts. I always knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, make my own rules, and care for my patients on my own terms. Having that desire really drove me to the point of wanting to open my own successful business.

While fulfilling, opening, and running your own business is not easy you must take into accountability all the things that come along with it: marketing, bookkeeping, networking, credentialing, hiring, and firing etc. If you like working a 9 to 5 job, then owning your own business is likely not for you. If you are up to the task, the next step is to determine what kind of impact you want to have on your community and profession, while making sure that what you want to do matches up with a need in the area you want to serve. There are several different types of medical practices to consider when you decide that a private practice is in your plan.

When you start a solo medical practice, you take on almost all the responsibility. This gives you full control of how your practice operates, but you may encounter higher startup costs for things such as marketing, credentialing, malpractice insurance and medical equipment. You will certainly have to put in more hours, since you are working on both the business and clinical sides. On top of this, you will take on all the other risks of starting a business.

Group practice

When you start a group medical practice, you share the work burden evenly with other medical professionals, so you will work less. These shorter hours come at the expense of the full control you have with a solo medical practice, but you may have easier access to working capital, thereby lowering your startup costs.

Hospital-owned

If you start a medical practice within a hospital network, you will work on a schedule and be subject to certain employee constraints, but you will have the hospitals working capital and marketing resources at your disposal. You will also minimize the risk involved in starting a new business, though you may not have as much personal flexibility and freedom; you may have to work within the boundaries set by a medical board.

Federally qualified health center

If you start a medical practice within a federally qualified health center, your launch will work almost the same as it does when you go the hospital-owned route. With federally qualified health centers, you may run up against slight caps on working capital based on federal resource allocation.

The biggest challenge to remember is that success does not happen overnight. There is no universal formula for starting a medical practice. As a Nurse Practitioner you must ask yourself tough, but important questions.

• What will be the focus of my practice?
• What are the goals of opening your own practice?
• Where will it be located?
• Will you take cash or accept insurance-based clients?
• Will you need financial support?
• Will you be taking out a loan? If so, where will you apply for one?
• Will you be able to function in the red for at least a year?
• Will you hire staff for the first year or will you run everything solo?

Overall, there are many common items that must be on your checklist when building your practice from the ground up. With so much to do, you might be asking yourself where to begin. In a word of financing. Again, the actual dollar amount depends on your unique situation, but in general, you should aim to secure at least $180,000 to cover startup costs, equipment, cover payroll and bills for at least a year or until your revenue stream is established and stable, which can take some time. A business plan is essential with revenue and debt projections grounded in reality. In your business plan you should account for all your medical clinic expenses, debt and anticipated revenues. Banks can tell what projections are realistic and which aren't; it's their job to make wise investments, so you'll want to back up any numbers you use. A strong business plan will project at least three years into the future.

The first thing you need to do is build a plan which basically tells the story of what your revenue will be from the first until at least the third year, because you need to go out and get financing. You should include the costs to set up the practice, your lease's cost per square foot, your electronic medical record or EMR expense, medical supplies, and office supplies. This is called building a crystal ball of what the practice looks like, and you must be able to tell how all those numbers came into being.

Obtaining financing through a traditional bank loan can be tricky, especially considering that many healthcare providers have a negative net worth after taking on debt to attend school. This is where a solid, realistic business plan comes in.

Electronic health record (EHR) systems are increasingly essential tools of the trade for medical providers. Digitizing records and streamlining communication is a high priority for the modern healthcare provider. Your practice management system is the lifeblood of your practice. Integrated with your EHR system, a practice management system keeps track of all your front-office information and facilitates operations. Chief among its uses is conducting and monitoring your billing and revenue cycle. Not only will your staff use the practice management system to bill patients and send claims to payers, but any relevant information will be shared between the EHR system and the practice management software, eliminating the need to duplicate records.

Never start a business just to make money, start a business to make a difference.

-Marie Forleo.

DO YOUR RESEARCH! No one should just open a practice for the sake of opening one without any research into their idea. The first thing you need to do if you plan on opening your own medical practice is to develop a business plan, with revenue and debt projections grounded. In your business plan, you should account for all your medical clinic expenses, debt, and anticipated revenues. Your projections should be realistic. A strong business plan will project at least three years into the future. Make sure you know what your state requires of you. If you are in a state that requires a collaborating physician also known as a supervising physician, make sure that you have him/her on board. Your collaborating physician can be a physician that you may have worked with in the past.

Next step will be to hire an attorney who has experience with setting up NP businesses and understands the laws within your state. When this is done you want to hire an accountant to work with the lawyer on setting up the best entity for you legally and for tax purposes. Certain tax benefits are associated with each type of entity. Whether you incorporate as an S-corp or LLC, a C-corp or a general partnership, it is important to do your research on each type of entity and the potential benefits it offers your practice.