Practice Management 101 (Part 2!)

So on the opposite side of that-ish, when a clinic is struggling, where should the practice owners focus on to cut resources and financial burden first? I think first, were you pointing at

me?

No, I'm like, I got something big to say, but I want you to go first.

I

think first, I mean, you have to figure out if it is a production problem.

So it's at the top of your profit and loss statement.

You know, we're not generating the revenue that we need.

Or is it an expenses problem? So below that.

And then when you're looking at expenses, I mean, there's so many different things that you can analyze.

But, you know, payroll, vaccine costs, rent, all of those things need to be looked at.

But.

There is generally one best way to improve your financial situation, and that's just to make more cash.

So the more patients that you can see, the better you can do with your coding, the more timely you can be with filing your claims, you know, so that you're not basically loaning money to the insurance companies for free.

So the quicker you claim what is your due, all of those things can help your financial position.

So I'm going to say something very similar to what Katrina just had to say, but I'm going to be more abrupt.

Almost every time, cutting costs is a mistake.

It's a practice suffers from not having enough revenue, which is essentially what Katrina was nice enough to say.

Well, you should check to see which side of the P&L it's on.

But I mean, routinely, I had never saved a practice because I trimmed down their staff.

I've helped a practice get back on its feet because they had the wrong staff and they were paying too much because their staff wasn't doing enough.

But no, the problem is always they're not seeing enough patients or they're seeing the wrong types of patients or when they see them, they're not doing the right work or they are paying themselves poorly.

Those are always the problems.

And if you think about it, I would say to anyone here who runs their own business, think about cutting your costs 10%.

Think of how hard that would be.

That'd be huge, right? That'd be really hard to cut your costs 10%.