2 Key Tips To Keep the Overhead low: What is The Secret To Breaking Even?

How Am I Going to Pay All of the Bills?

Keeping the overhead low is what separates a lean medical practice start up from the bloated corporate owned practices. This is your secret to answering the key question: “how is starting a medical private practice even financially feasible?”

Before even seeing my first patient, I had to spend a chunk of change to get the practice up in running, and let’s not forget the recurring costs.

I can’t tell you how many times I heard “Back in my day, you could start a practice. Now it’s impossible!”

I was feeling pretty down myself about my old job. There were many reasons for my dissatisfaction with my old job, and I felt trapped.

Fortunately, I found a community both in person and online. I will never forget discovering the Solo Building Blog community. I am glad it was out there. It showed me that there were many doctors going solo and they were all doing extremely well. Even at AAO, I had the chance to talk to a large community of solo ophthalmologist that showed me that solo was possible.

What’s the secret? Focus on staying lean. A high overhead will crush any practice no matter how good it is.

#1 Having a lot of staff is nice, but it will drive your overhead up.

A huge advantage of a solo practice is that I have full control over the staff and make the decisions to hire or expand my team when the time is right.

When I first started my office, I did not have any employees. I was doing everything – scheduling, insurance verification, tech’ing, and of course, being the doctor.

My first hire was a front desk employee, and honestly, she has been a huge part of the success. I waited weeks and months before I found someone who I believe could be the perfect fit at my office.

Compare that to my old office – I had 2 front desk people, 2 optical people, 1 surgical scheduler, 3 techs, 1 scribe. The overhead was extremely high. Don’t get me wrong, it is nice having a large office staff, but I consider that an expensive luxury.

#2 Buying capital equipment only as a needed it

Surgeons are picky, and and not having to cater to every surgeons needs helps keep the cost done

Just walk into your large practice and look at all of that $20-50K equipment in a single office. And now look at the layer of dust on the machine or the actual dust cover on the machine. It tells you a lot.

At my old office, we had one room full of equipment we weren’t using. The unused equipment sitting in that room easily cost over 100K.

As a solo provider, I know what I need, and I definitely know what I don’t need to waste money on.

For example, in my office, I have exactly what I need: 1 slit lamp lane, 1 really nice biometer, 1 topographer. Essentially 1 of everything I need.

How Lean Are You? 

For those of you reading who are working as an employee, take a look at your contract. If you are only keeping about 28-30%, your overhead is a hefty 70%. Or worse, your practice is making a lot from you.

Most solo ophthalmologists can keep about 60-65%, so their overhead is a much lower 30-35%. And that’s the key.

Keeping lean is how you can almost see half the patients and pay yourself the same.

Don’t believe me, in the next post, Im gonna break down the essentials: the pro-forma and the business plan.

Questions or concerns? Please comment below