In the past, if your schedule was full, it meant that you were a "good" doctor and you had plenty of money.

Now, in some markets more than others, the referral patterns are being changed and if your schedule is full, you probably work for someone else, and for a lot less. I have a cardiologist cousin in Boston who has had to sell his practice to his primary hospital last year. The times they are a changin.

From our discussions, it seems that there are only two options. You can become a better doctor and you can become a better business. There is always room for improvement, think quality improvement programs. Every problem is a clue that maybe a system needs to be improved, maybe I need to be improved.

I don't mean to pontificate, and to bring the topic back to v7, there seems to be so much room for improvement in the glorified billing programs we use. Getting paid for what we bill with the least staff is important, but to fight in the more competitive market, we need real practice management software. Every successful regional or national business you know has one.

If AC would develop a PM that made it easy to determine the profit/loss for every activity in a typical small practice, it would sell like hotcakes.


Dan
Rheumatology