The Best Time To Hire a New Physician for Your Practice
Dr. Scott Pope serves as the Chief Growth Officer at In Scope Ventures, a growth consulting firm focused on early stage healthcare companies. Scott is passionate about healthcare entrepreneurship and has been involved in various advocacy efforts to promote innovation in the industry.
Scott earned his PharmD from Ohio Northern University, where he participated in Habitat for Humanity, Phi Mu Delta, Order of Omega, and NCAA basketball. After graduating from ONU, Scott completed a pharmacy residency at Cone Health, followed by a specialty residency in infectious diseases, internal medicine, and academics at Campbell University and Duke University Medical Center.
Strategic decisions and timing are two sides of the same coin. Typically, the bigger the decision, the more important it is to get the timing right.
Sometimes, though, we mistake “right” timing for “perfect” timing. It’s a classic case of letting perfect become the enemy of good, and it often leads to putting off necessary action.
For example, look at the decision to start a family. What conditions must be met to count as the “perfect time”?
When you’re debt-free? When you own your home instead of renting? When your marriage is perfect? When your business is thriving?
If everyone waited until the perfect time to have children, humanity would have died out long ago. We know there’s no such thing as the perfect time. If it’s something we want, we simply try to find the best time and take the leap.
In a similar way, choosing to grow our private practice by recruiting and hiring additional doctors is a major decision — and it’s absolutely necessary if growth and scaling are goals we hope to achieve.
First, we have to let go of any notion that the perfect time will ever present itself.
3 Fears of Hiring a New Doctor Too Soon
We don’t have to dig very deep to see why we feel the need to wait for the perfect time to expand the practice. The obvious answer is fear (and not in a vague, “just change your mindset” way).
There are plenty of legitimate, practical fears and concerns that — as responsible business owners — we must address before making a decision about hiring a doctor.
“Perfect” timing may not exist, but poor timing is very real. We have to find the balance between hiring too soon and hiring too late. And both have consequences.
Ultimately, the fears we have around hiring too soon revolve around finances and infrastructure.
1. What if I can’t afford to pay a new doctor?
The most obvious fear is not having the financial resources to hire a second, third, or fourth doctor onto the team. Physicians’ base salaries are not cheap and are taxing to your resources.
The prospect of paying multiple doctors out of pocket when you lack the existing revenue to support their overhead can be terrifying.
2. What if I can’t afford to invest in them?
In addition to the new base salary, you’ll also need to invest in filling a new doctor’s patient panel. Let’s say you can afford the additional compensation. If you can’t afford the marketing needed to attract the new patients that would justify that salary… what then?
3. What if I don’t have the infrastructure in place to support them?
A third fear about hiring doctors too soon is that you lack the refined systems and processes to onboard a new doctor. Even if you can find and afford the right hire, there’s concern that bringing them into the practice without a defined system could hurt your brand, diminish patient experience, or cause major administrative headaches.
Again, these fears are legitimate. No one should hire if they’re completely unready to do so. And if your practice hasn’t contemplated the aforementioned three hurdles, you should surely address them before proceeding.
4 Consequences of Hiring Too Late
In many cases, physicians are more ready than they realize, and the fears of hiring too soon can cause them to hire too late. This leads to an entirely new set of problems.
1. Your Freedom Suffers
Besides finding someone who is highly skilled and competent, you need to hire a doctor who matches the caliber of your practice. Their personality should complement your own, and they should fit your practice culture and the patients you serve.
Finding someone who meets all these criteria is one thing. Convincing them to relocate and offering competitive compensation and incentives that will satisfy them is another challenge.
This causes the process to take much longer than you may anticipate. It can take a year or more to bring a new physician on staff.
This leads to getting bogged down with too many patients for your capacity. Your freedom suffers, just like it did before you opened your practice.
2. You Waste Money
When pressed for time to make a hire, you can feel like your entire practice is on fire. This causes you to make rash decisions.
In panic mode, you can end up overspending on expensive recruiting agencies that promise to match you with a perfect-fit doctor. But that rarely ends with a hire in our private medicine world, thus costing you money and putting you no closer to hiring the right person.
3. Patient Care Drops
For most private physicians, providing high-quality patient care and experience is their top priority. But when stretched too thin and acting from desperation, you may move forward with a hire… even though you know they’re not the best fit.
In this case, your patients experience the effects of not hiring soon enough. And if you thought hiring the right doctor was difficult, it pales in comparison to getting rid of the wrong one.
4. Your Growth Stalls
If you have a sizable patient waitlist before you start the hiring process, you risk stalling your growth when you finally make a hire.
The prospects on your list won’t wait forever. Some will still be willing to work with you when you have the capacity, but if your ideal patient is a successful, motivated high-achiever, chances are they will have found another practice. As you know, many of these high-achievers move all over the country and even the globe, so their market for having a private physician extends well beyond any one physical location.
The Desire for Scaling Up
Of course, anyone can avoid the negative consequences of not hiring if growth isn’t a priority.
Some private physicians are satisfied with a panel of 100 patients or less, while others prefer to see several hundred. When a physician reaches their threshold and isn’t interested in growing beyond it, they shouldn’t add another doctor to the team.
Most private physicians, though, aren’t satisfied with stagnation or the status quo. That’s why they became private physicians in the first place. They understand the value of the business they’re creating. They want to have an impact that lasts long after they retire from the practice of medicine.
They understand that their business is not only taking care of patients but also teaching other physicians to care for their patients.
The Baseline Infrastructure
Even if you have a desire to grow and scale your concierge practice, you may not have the infrastructure in place that would allow you to add another physician to your team in the immediate future.
But if growth is a priority, create a plan to develop the infrastructure so hiring can become a reality. Here are the baseline elements you’ll need.
- Recruiting documents. A job description, employee agreement, and compensation plan are just a few of the documents you need in place before you begin looking to hire.
- Processes and infrastructure to onboard. How will you train the new physician in the ways of your company? Are you looking to hire an employee? Or are you looking for someone who wants to buy into your practice and eventually become a partner? What type of benefits will you offer? Who pays the costs of relocation?
- Logistics. Do you expect the new physician to bring their own patient panel? Will they need to hire their own nurse or medical assistant after they begin working for you? Or will you hire this support staff for them? Do you have enough physical space and office equipment to add another care provider?
- Branding. Does your brand list only your name? Or is your brand positioned for growth into a team of physicians? Remember the caliber of human you’re seeking in this role. Does your brand offer them a chance to be an integral part of it or just to belong to it?
- Marketing. If you don’t have a marketing machine that is currently bringing a steady flow of patients to your practice, you’ll want to correct this before you hire another doctor.
Once your infrastructure can handle the additional physician, begin your search.
The Best Time To Begin the Search
You’ll want to begin the search for the right physician long before you need them.
One of our ROAMD members recently discussed how they’ll need to hire another doctor every year going forward in order to continue to grow their business the way they want.
This particular physician is always staying ahead of the process, so they’re constantly looking for the right person. They’re always ready to make a great offer to top candidates when they appear.
If your objections to beginning the search are purely monetary, get creative with how you compensate. You should be able to compensate a new physician fairly for his or her base salary, but beyond that, it’s up to you. Offer to pay relocation expenses, or provide other incentives like shares in the company and retirement benefits.
Ready To Grow, but Don’t Know Where To Start Looking?
Don’t wait too long to hire the next doctor for your team. It’s easy to tell yourself you’re waiting for the perfect time, but if that time comes, you’ll probably have waited too long.
If you’d like to learn more about ROAMD and how we can help you in the hiring process, check out our private physician network.
Scott Pope, PharmD is the CEO of ROAMD, a network for physicians in membership-based medical practice who want to enhance their profitability without losing their independence. He also serves as the Chief Growth Officer at In Scope Ventures, a growth consulting firm focused on early stage healthcare companies. Scott is passionate about healthcare entrepreneurship and has been involved in various advocacy efforts to promote innovation in the industry.
Scott earned his PharmD from Ohio Northern University, where he participated in Habitat for Humanity, Phi Mu Delta, Order of Omega, and NCAA basketball. After graduating from ONU, Scott completed a pharmacy residency at Cone Health, followed by a specialty residency in infectious diseases, internal medicine, and academics at Campbell University and Duke University Medical Center.
-02.svg)