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Three Ways to Grow Your Medical Practice in a Scalable Way

What is your vision for with that. Adding mid-level providers such as data, you need the right technology,
your medical practice five From a business nurse practitioners and physician assis- training and processes.
years from now? What standpoint, new tants is another consideration. In some Your practice management software
about 15 years from now? If physicians can bring a cases, having a variety of provider types can help you to better understand,
you want your practice to book of new patients might be more cost effective and could track, and improve performance of your
grow in a sustainable way, to your practice, help increase operational efficiency. practice over time. With proper report-
there are a few things to enable you to expand No matter what types of providers ing, you can discover actionable
consider. service offerings and you add to your practice, you will want insights and opportunities related to
For starters, your operat- help you to distribute to calculate your expected return on profitability, revenue cycle, costs, liq-
ing model needs to be scala- capital costs. Overall, investment (ROI) before moving ahead. uidity or productivity.
ble to support future expan- having another physi- A healthcare consultant can assist you A qualified healthcare consultant can
sion. What works for a $1- cian (or two) on your with assessing your options and under- help you determine which key perform-
million-a-year practice with team can help you standing the financial and operational ance indicators you should be measur-
two physicians might not BY KEVIN N. FINE gain more freedom impact of adding providers to your ing at your practice and can assist in
work for a $5-million-a- and give you more practice. designing analytics dashboards and
year practice with 10 physi- options for how you metrics reports to track financial and
cians – or for a $25-million-a-year prac- run your practice. And when it’s time to 2. Expand clinical space operational performance.
tice with 50 physicians. start thinking about retiring or selling Increasing your physical footprint If your existing IT systems are not the
There are many ways to prepare your your practice, you will have more can enable you to see more patients, best fit for your practice, you may want
practice for the future and many ways options – and a more valuable practice add more personnel and expand service to engage a professional who can guide
to increase revenue, including offering – if you are not the only physician on offerings. But it’s not enough to just add you throughout the software selection
ancillary services, consolidating with a staff. a couple of rooms or move to a bigger and implementation process, helping
competitor through a merger or acqui- Of course, you need to weigh the location. The planning process is you to avoid common pitfalls and to
sition, and participating in alternative pros and cons of any big decision. important. A qualified healthcare con- maximize the value of your technology
payment models. Before bringing on an additional sultant with experience in medical investment.
Let’s take a look at three ways that provider, you should think about how practice expansion can assist you in Ultimately, adding more providers,
you might consider expanding the scale that addition might change the dynam- planning your space to be as efficient expanding clinical space, and perhaps
and scope of your practice with a long- ic in your office. Is this person a good and effective as possible, which can most importantly, making better use of
term view. cultural fit and a good fit for your exist- help you to maximize infrastructure your data, can help you grow your
ing patient base? ROI. practice in a sustainable way and
1. Bring on more physicians Other considerations include: Your considerations may include: increase the value of your practice in
Adding providers to your practice • What are the risks involved in • How much space do you really need the long run, making your vision a real-
can offer several benefits – both for you bringing on a physician with a different to serve patients? ity.
personally and for your business. specialty? • What is the optimal way to divide
On a personal level, one of the most • What new equipment will you need clinical versus office space? Kevin N. Fine, MHA, is a director of
notable benefits is improving your to purchase to support his or her prac- • What is the most efficient floor healthcare advisory services in the Miami
quality of life. How would you like to tice? plan/layout for your practice? office of Kaufman Rossin, one of the Top
have the flexibility to keep your prac- • How will you divide patient load, 50 CPA and advisory firms in the U.S.
tice open year-round and still be able to schedules, and responsibilities for man- 3. Leverage technology He can be reached at
spend more time with family, take vaca- aging the practice? and data kfine@kaufmanrossin.com.
tion time, or even work fewer days per • How will you address compensa- Data is the key to better practice
week? Addi tional providers can help tion? management. In order to leverage that

Cover Story: Why Predictive Analytics?

Continued from page 1 its value is communicated to leadership. Chief Medical Off icers, Chief Medical Infor -
matics Officers, and those responsible for quality need to be cheerleaders in this regard.
Consider the value of predicting and intervening on:
• Heart failure patients at high risk for readmission - Parkland Health and Hospital Pushing for adoption and building a capable team should come from finance, strategic
System in Dallas, TX reduced readmissions by 26%. 1 planning, quality, and management engineering departments. Return on investment and
• Newborns with infections. Kaiser Permanente of North California reduced excessive effort is many folds. But an independent assessment will help senior leadership under-
use of antibiotics -- “0.05% of all newborns have infection confirmed by blood culture, stand the benefits, cost, and hurdles of building advanced analytic and modeling capa-
11% of them receive antibiotics.” 2 bilities.
• Patients at high risk for central line-associated bloodstream infections. Thousands of You often hear the saying culture, leadership, innovation, etc. starts at the top. Boards
preventable deaths occur each year and billions of dollars in waste. 3 of Directors and Trustees of health systems, along with their Chief Executive Officers will
• Patients at high risk for non-adherence to medication protocols. Annually, non- need to appreciate the importance of predictive analytics and its use in their organiza-
adherence causes 125,000 deaths, 10% rate of unnecessary hospitalizations, and $100 to tions. They will need to ensure that management is at the forefront of such issues, look-
$289 billion in healthcare spending waste. 4 ing for opportunities, managing them, and employing the necessary resources, including
• Urgent care center characteristics that maximizes patient volume at maximum prof- qualified data analytics professionals. Just as boards of companies that have used off-bal-
itability. ance financing vehicles should understand such vehicles, when to employ them, how,
Adoption of advanced predictive modeling is slow among hospitals – about 15% and when not to, healthcare systems should understand the power of predictive analyt-
5
deployed the technique in 2015. Jvion survey results show these early adopters focused ics, how they are used, and when to employ predictive analytics to increase quality and
on patient risk or illness; most notably, “readmissions, patient deterioration, sepsis, and decrease costs to be competitive in this ever-changing healthcare landscape.
general patient health.” 6
There are a number of healthcare systems that are early adopters of predictive analyt- Richard Klass, Vice President and Co-founder, KCI Partners, Inc., can be reached at
ics. Not surprisingly, these early adopters appear to be the most innovative and market rklass@kcipartners.com. Paul DeMuro, Of Counsel, Broad and Cassel LLP,
leaders, and likely will be the most profitable in the transition from fee-for-service to pay- can be reached at pdemuro@broadandcassel.com.
ment for quality and cost-effectiveness. Their clinical divisions can identify quality con- 1 R. Parkikh, Z. Obermeyer, and D. Bates (August 2017), Making Predictive Analytics a Routine Part of
siderations and their business units can identify cost considerations, and they can coor- Patient Care, Harvard Business Review. Found at: https://hbr.org/2016/04/making-predictive-analytics-a-rou-
dinate on predictive analytic models to increase quality and decrease costs. Doing so will tine-part-of-patient-care
be the keys to success under value-based health care. 2 Ibid.
Given the lack of sufficient data analytics professionals in this country, many health- 3 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Found at: https://www.cdc.gov/hai/bsi/bsi.html
4 M. Viswanathan, C, Golin, C. Jones, M. Ashok, et al. (December 2012), Interventions to Improve
care systems have to triage the projects on which they will work, minimizing their ability Adherence to Self-administered Medications for Chronic Diseases in the United States: A Systematic Review,
to effectively manage care. However, those healthcare systems that already have data ana- Annals of Internal Medicine. Found at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22964778
lytics professionals and do predictive modeling, have a good head start on those that do 5 Jvion (March 2015), Jvion Releases Findings from Latest Predictive Analytics in Healthcare Survey,
not. Some healthcare systems are slow to adopt new innovations, hoping to observe how Chimecentral, News & Press. Found at: https://chimecentral.org/jvion-releases-findings-latest-predictive-ana-
they are adopted by others. Doing so in this space can be a prescription for disaster. It is lytics-healthcare-survey/
6 Ibid.
imperative that healthcare systems understand the value of predictive analytics, and that

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