3 Mistakes Doctors Starting a Private Practice Can Avoid To Become Profitable Quickly

Lesson 1: Early Networking with Primary Care Groups

No one else is in a rush for you to start seeing patients.

You want big groups to send you patients. Big groups are less agile and may require holding department meetings and having IT departments add you to the referrals list. No matter how badly their patients need your services, they probably cannot send you patients tomorrow.

Start early enough that the worst case scenario is booking new patients a month out from the referral -- at least that's no longer than the local competition.

Lesson 2: Thoroughly Investigate The Local Insurance Landscape

You can predict more about your future getting onto insurance panels than I realized.

With some simple research, you can essentially rule out contracts with certain insurance companies. Compare the largest local hospital system's list of accepted insurances with the independent groups in your speciality. The discrepancies are the insurance companies you need to ask about -- try calling and asking someone at a local billing department.

It's important to be aware of portions of the local insurance market you'll be blocked from in order to tailor your marketing.

Lesson 3: Keep Costs As Low As Possible

Investing money into your practice feels great until you have to start worrying about runway.

There's an initial urge to spend a little extra to buy things your practice will need soon enough anyway. While the price of my PRP setup stung a little, I wanted to be ready to embrace this valuable component of my process asap. After a few months with slower than expected growth, I suddenly began to think of this cost as money I could've used to be sure my practice could stay open another month.

If you couldn't keep the lights on for a year with zero patients, keep expenses as barebones as possible until you've actually begun to see patients with an accelerating trajectory.