CLINICAL

  DIVERSIFY YOUR PORTFOLIO

REMAIN PROFITABLE

CONSISTENTLY RE-EVALUATE YOUR PRACTICE PROFILE TO ENSURE SUCCESS

JEFFRY D. GERSON, O.D., F.A.A.O.

WE HAVE all heard about the importance of diversifying our personal finance portfolio. This is a good rule-of-thumb, as putting all your eggs in one basket is not safe. In fact, this year has been a great example of how some sectors of the market have outperformed expectations, and others have done quite poorly.

Another way to diversify your holdings is to make sure your practice has multiple revenue streams. The three avenues to maintain are (1) services, (2) equipment and (3) insurance.

Here, I discuss how to address some concerns surrounding these three areas.

SERVICES

Do you see only one demographic or type of patient? What if that demographic became obsolete or no longer came to you? Would you have a back-up plan? For example, the ability and willingness to fit spherical myopic contact lenses along with presbyopic-correcting contact lenses allows for a deep pool of available patients. The same can be said about seeing medical patients. If you don’t or can’t treat glaucoma, you are missing the opportunity to attract a whole population of patients.

Consider a variety of services to offer to patients. Allow your practice to grow based on those offerings, and re-evaluate what can be eliminated and added on a regular basis.

EQUIPMENT

What equipment do you have in your office? Do you have enough to stay current and be able to see different types of patients (as mentioned above)? To treat many conditions by today’s standards, advanced technology is required. For instance, for glaucoma, at the very least, an automated visual field instrument is needed, and really an OCT is vital as well.

Another example is dry eye disease (DED). There are many options for helping to diagnose and monitor DED that didn’t exist 10 years ago and that really allow you to specialize in that area.

Remain up-to-date on the treatment plans and those tools necessary to execute those plans. Research each piece of new equipment, its capabilities, your colleague’s interactions with it and the cost vs. the anticipated revenue in a given period of time as a result of the new machinery.

INSURANCE

If you take insurance, it may be worth having a mix of different companies for which you are a provider. You may want to treat different conditions, but are you on the insurance panels to be able to do so? Even with routine care, what if all the local teachers are on one plan this year, but they switch next year? Are you already on the new plan? If not, would you be able to get on it?

Be proactive and maintain several plans. Of course there will also be those that you find are not worth being a part of, which is smart business as well.

DIVERSIFY INTERNALLY

There are many ways to diversify within a practice without having to look “outside” for multiple revenue streams. Internal diversification keeps your practice relevant and increases its longevity. As things change, so must we! OM

DR. GERSON practices at Grin Eyecare in Olathe, Kan., a full-scope combined O.D./M.D. practice. Email him at jgerson@hotmail.com or visit tinyurl.com/OMcomment to comment on this article.