Written by Tim Pacek Tuesday, 07 December 2010 00:00

It’s that time of the year again.  The leaves are falling, the temperature is dropping, the days are getting shorter, and people are getting sick.  The flu has already started to wreak havoc on the general population and every office I have visited is already preparing for flu season.  This got me thinking about how we take so many precautions to stay healthy.  We have regular checkups, take vitamins, and even get injected with the flu just to stop us from really getting it!  We take so much time and put in so much effort for our bodies, and we should, but how come we don’t do nearly as much when it comes to our business. 

I spend 4 to 5 days every week in practices and the vast majority of those practices do not even consider the health of their business until it starts to cough.  This occurs for a number of reasons I think.  First and foremost, medicine is still not really thought of as a business for most physicians.  They started practicing medicine for the medicine and the patients not because it was a lifelong aspiration to start their own small business.  In fact, most practices run more like a family than a business.  Patients are treated as friends and given special exceptions to the rules and staff is often untrained for their positions.  However, the landscape in the industry has changed and this exactly what they are doing, operating their own small business in a struggling economy.  They don’t worry about the business because the business doesn’t really exist. 

Another reason I think that practices are not too concerned about their business health is because most practices don’t know what to do when they do see a problem.  I had a mentor in college that often used to tell me that the reason people don’t change is because we are very adept at putting bandages on things.  If we discover a problem we are very quick to put a bandage on it but, at the same time, we are not very willing to understand why it happened and perform surgery to fix the root cause.  I think this can be applied to business as well, particularly medical practices.  Even if a practice was savvy enough to find a flaw in their business plan or in their daily operations they would most likely slap a bandage on the problem and move on.  Before you know it, you have a practice that is covered in bandages and about to spill its guts at any time.

It is unfortunate that the industry has become what it is, but that is not something that is going to change so it’s best to prepare yourself for the inevitable: it’s a business!!  This push for electronic records and sharing patient data is just going to reinforce that truth more and more.  What scares me is that practices do not realize that having an EHR is not going to make their practice run smoother or allow them to see more patients.  On the contrary, an EHR will take a practice with bandages and throw it in a pool of peroxide.  Everyone in that practice is going to feel the sting and the burn of the problems that have been covered with bandages.  That is why we push transformation so much.  I know, I know, it has become a buzz word in the industry and it is just vague enough that you are never quite sure what someone means when they talk about “transformation” but that doesn’t make it any less important. 

When I talk about transformation I mean performing surgery to fix the problems that will sting later if bandages are put on them.  We identify the problem; perform x-rays and MRIs to figure out why it happened, and then strategically perform surgery to resolve the issue so it never happens again.  If you don’t do this, you are going to have a lot of pain later.  It is scary, it’s hard, and it does not heal overnight but it’s necessary.  You do it for your body; you owe it to your business.