Practice Planning: Four Practical Steps to Help Ensure That You Reach Your Practice Goals in 2022

I did a quick search the other day and found lots of companies that are telling practice owners what their goals should be in 2022.

My only objection to that is, that you know your practice and they don't. No one should tell you what goals you should set for your practice. Not me, not anyone. You should set your own goals based on the needs of your practice, and your personal goals in life.

At ExecTech we've helped thousands of practice owners over the years to achieve their goals. It's what we do. Here are four effective, practical things that we've taught them, that will give you a better shot at hitting your practice targets in 2022.

1) Decide the goals that you want to achieve this year in your practice and write them down. Make the commitment. Don't make the mistake of not setting goals just because you're not sure whether you can achieve them. The most productive goals are challenging.

2) Get specific: If you want more new patients; how many more new patients do you want? If you want better staff; better in what way? If you're looking at adding an associate; what are the characteristics and skills of the associate that you want to hire? Do you want to increase practice income? By how much? What's your target number? Do you want to open another office? How do you plan to go about that? Do you want to lower the stress in your practice? What is it that's causing this stress?

3) The next step is to spot anything that you think might make it difficult to reach each of the goals that you've set. You're going to have to deal with these factors anyway, so you should identify them as specifically as possible up-front so that you can make preparations to deal with them.

Let's call them barriers. In identifying barriers, make sure that you identify the actual problem, not just what seems like the problem. Here are three examples:

a) You may be having trouble hitting your production target and think that it's because you don't have enough new patients. The actual problem, though, might be that your scheduling coordinator just doesn't want to work any harder. This might be the reason that you're not getting more new patients.

b) You may be having trouble hitting your collections target. The actual problem might be that your financial coordinator thinks that you're charging too much, so she reduces your fees by cutting deals with patients.

c) You may have too many holes in your schedule and think that you need to add more front desk staff. The actual problem might be that your patient contact system needs to be more effective so that fewer patients are getting lost or falling through the cracks.

You should only list barriers that are reasonably likely. Listing unreal barriers like: “What if all of my staff quit?” or “What if my practice burns down?” will usually just act as unproductive distractions.

4) Work out the achievement of your goals on a step by step basis. What do you need to do first, second, third, etc. to achieve each of your goals? Think it through and don't leave anything important out. Effective planning takes some work, but your goals are worth this kind of planning.

Some practice owners are reluctant to set practice goals. They think that the problems in their practice are too big or too difficult or too complex to handle and they don't know the best way to solve them.

Or maybe they don't set goals because they're completely happy with the way things are in their practice: They're making plenty of money to fund their retirement. They have no staff problems. All of their patients are very compliant and accept whatever treatment they diagnose. Patients come back like clockwork for recall or check-ups; so they feel no need to do any better.

Most practice owners look at 2022 and want to make it better than 2021. They want to help more people, they want to make more money, etc. Whatever your reason for wanting to improve, if this is you, congratulations!

And here's where we can help. If you'd like to get some insight into the actual barriers that your practice is facing and how to most effectively overcome them, fill out our Practice Management Analysis. It's a free, private, online service that you can fill out at your convenience. It takes about 20 minutes. Go to exectechweb.com/pma, fill it out, and one of our consultants will get back to you to schedule a time at your convenience to review it with you and make recommendations. There's no charge for this review. It's a free service that we offer to healthcare professionals.

If you have a question about any of the points in this video, give me a call at (800) 340-6737 ext. 2. I talk to people all the time about their practices and I'd be happy to answer your questions.

Yours in success,

Mike Graves

Senior Consultant

ExecTech