Five Reasons Why Engaging a Practice Management Consultant is a Good Idea
Are you wondering would your practice benefit from possibly sourcing an outside consultant for managing aspects of your practice?
You might be struggling with the decision of hiring a physician practice management consultant because it indicates an inadequacy in running your practice or you might be worried that team members will be threatened by an outside consultant’s suggestions for change. This thinking is counterproductive toward leading your practice in a positive direction. The following reasons demonstrate why engaging a physician practice management consultant is often a necessary tool for taking your practice to the next level.
Learning from An Objective Outsider’s Perspective
You have invested a significant amount of time, energy and resources into your practice. You live with the pressures of creating an environment that is successful every day. Often, due to bias or simply being too close to the issues to see clearly, leadership and team members can easily become blind to problems that are right in front of them. Practice management consultants have an outside perspective. They provide “fresh eyes” and can spot the issues holding your practice back from moving forward.
Furthermore, your practice might be suffering from relationship dynamics that make it difficult for team members to speak openly and honestly about operational and other issues. Reaching your practice goals might be suffering from a lack of unified strategy due to poor performance or power struggles. A neutral and objective consultant will be able to identify and speak openly about these issues without fear of reprisal.
Accomplishing Short-Term Goals
Your team members are focused on what they need to accomplish within their own job descriptions. It can be difficult to get them to implement short-term goals when it involves going outside their day-to-day duties and / or utilizing other skill sets. If you ask team members to perform outside their normal “work limits,” they may get annoyed at having additional duties or may simply be too inexperienced for the assignment. Bringing in an experienced physician practice management consultant and the resources available to him or her often ends up saving substantial time and money that would be involved in retraining employees, organizing and prioritizing their schedules and executing the strategy.
Leveraging New Skills
A major part of every consultant’s job is to keep up with current practice management trends, strategies and methodologies. They offer a wealth of knowledge and skills in areas that your practice could benefit from. Your team members are focused on the day-to-day operations of providing patient care. They don’t have the time to stay current with operational methodologies or to learn how to be successful at things like recruitment & retention, risk management and practice marketing. When these skills are provided by a practice management consultant, you benefit from a cadre of knowledge about what is currently available and if it has been successful in similar situations. Furthermore, practice leaders and team members can learn new skills from a practice management consultant that they can carry forward for the practice long after the consultant is gone.
Benefitting from Outside Market Knowledge
When you hire a practice management consultant, you bring on board someone with experience and understanding of the surrounding marketplace in which your practice operates. Typically, a practice management consultant has spent time with similar practices that may or may not be competitors. Having this experience provides the practice management consultant with a solid perspective of what other practices are doing and what it will take to outperform the competition. For instance, a practice management consultant should know what similar providers in your market are using for staffing models, patient engagement and marketing so that you can compare and evaluate activities that might need to be adapted.
Creating Time for Strategic Planning
Let’s face it, it can be hard for practice leaders to find the extra time to develop effective plans and execution strategies on top of their other duties. Taking this time might feel like a luxury your practice can’t afford. Sadly, many potentially valuable projects and ideas never get traction merely due to lack of time. However, a practice management consultant devotes his or her time specifically towards the research and planning needed to help you reach your goals. Using that valuable time and knowledge, the practice management consultant can create a focused plan and tactics that will guide your team to success.
Comprehensive Physician Consulting provides the expertise and skill-set needed for your practice to be successful. Visit HERE to schedule a free initial consultation to learn how we can help you reach your goals.
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