Advice to Small Medicine Practitioners

I recently met with a management consultant who works with sick-care organizations. His potential client is building a new multispecialty clinic building and looking for some strategic and tactical direction to succeed given the multiple threats and opportunities.

What works for BIG MEDICINE does not for small medicine.

I suggested small medicine practitioners need to focus on four basic building blocks:

1. Innovation and Entrepreneurial Mindset

Hiring, developing, and retaining doctors with an entrepreneurial mindset, given there are so few of them, is a black art. You must create the culture, vision, structure, and processes for leading innovators, not managing innovation.

2. Marketing

A strategic communications plan must be aligned with the strategic vision and goals of the practice. Part of that plan will include your digical care strategy and tactics.

3. Health Information Technology Strategic Plan

He who can solve the data problems will hold many keys to the kingdom. Again, your HIT strategy must be aligned with your clinical and business goals.

4. Business Model

Your business model describes how you will create, grow, and harvest value. Changing rules and the ecosystems they create are rapidly changing, forcing concomitant and expected changes in care delivery models.

These recommendations should not be at the expense of revenue cycle management, customer service, or other elements of practice operations management. However, most of the success for small medicine practitioners will be determined by how well they practice the art and science of medical practice entrepreneurship, not just practice management, and meet the needs of diverse patient customer segments. Much like clinical care, one treatment will not fit all you will need multiple arrows in your quiver to hit the right targets.