Five facets of running a medical Private Practice

I've been running a private practice medical office for about 3-4 years now, along with my wife, Dr. Tammy Wu, Plastic Surgeon. I've come to realize that there are five main categories of the jobs that we take on as physician/business owners. They are:

The five facets of running a medical private practice:

1. Clinical
2. Customer Interfacing
3. Maintenance
4. Efficiency Improvement
5. Marketing


Expanding on the above:

Clinical includes:
a) surgeries
b) consultations
c) writing prescriptions
d) checking lab results
e) patient education
f) sales of medical products to the patients
g) exploring new fields and ideas in medicine
h) continuing medical education


Customer interfacing includes:
a) Front desk duties with the patients as they walk in.
b) Reminders of appointments for the patients
c) Scheduling the patients
d) Rebooking patients for appointments if necessary


Maintenance includes
a) Finances (such as going to the bank, paying taxes)
b) Cleaning of physical space
c) Cleaning of medical equipment
d) plant care
e) Inventory of medical supplies
f) Inventory of products for sale
g) Replenishing office supplies (paper, towels, paper plates)
h) Laundry
i) Hiring replacement employees
j) getting rid of spider webs
k) getting rid of old magazines, and getting new ones
l) renewing repair contracts
m) updating software
n) paying bills


Efficiency Improvement includes
a) updating patient forms
b) keeping up with latest trends
c) speeding up all other processes in the office by working smarter, not necessarily harder.
d) updating equipment (faster printers, faster scanners)
e) training employees, testing employees
f) hiring additional new employees with new roles


Marketing includes
a) website
b) newspaper advertising
c) email newsletter
d) open houses
e) community service
f) giving lectures
g) patient referral programs
h) meeting with reps from companies
i) internal marketing
j) Surgery Tracker
k) Coupons, specials


Running this practice requires that we wear many different hats. Sometimes we are working "in" the business and sometimes we're working "on" the business. The business is the Private Practice of Surgical Artistry - Our practice in Modesto, California specializing in Veins, Acupuncture, and Plastic Surgery.

I consider the "in the business" tasks to be:
- Clinical
- Maintenance
- Customer Interfacing


I consider the "on the business" tasks to be:
- Efficiency Improvement
- Marketing

The listing above has also helped me think about what's different about having a private practice from what it would be like to work at a larger corporation such as Kaiser. I would not spend as much time as an employee of a group like Kaiser on:

- Maintenance
- Customer Interfacing
- Marketing

Those three tasks would be somewhat missing in a large group. Although there would of course be some involvement in all those three items as a doctor working anywhere, but it wouldn't be as much as if one were running their own private practice.

Above are just some thoughts that I had, as I try to organize my daily activities.... I felt compelled to put this in writing - I think this categorization may be worth something to me in the future.

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