BOOK REVIEW: “Private Practice Survival Guide: A Journey to Unlock Your Freedom to Success”, by Brandon Seigel
To earn a degree in any of the healthcare specialties takes concentrated and focused study of the complex systems of the human body. Intensive medical training doesn’t prepare healthcare practitioners, though, for the business considerations of running a private practice.
This is where Brandon Seigel’s new book, Private Practice Survival Guide: A Journey to Unlock Your Freedom to Success, comes in. A business coach who specializes in today’s private practice environment, Seigel has provided a comprehensive guide for emerging healthcare entrepreneurs who are attempting to navigate the new terrain of business plans and bottom lines.
Health practitioners, whether they are physical therapists or podiatrists or any other healthcare specialist, are often driven more by purpose than by maximizing profits. They may struggle with some of the likely questions that a business owner needs to ask: What’s my value proposition? How do I fund my operation? What’s considered a healthy profit margin?
With chapters devoted to the components every budding business owner should take into consideration — from “Developing Your Optimum Payer Mix” to “Building Your Building Department to Secrets of Recruitment, Hiring and the Management of People” — Private Practice Survival Guide spells out all the particulars of opening a practice. Seigel invites readers to give the book a once-through, then to reread the chapters covering the content that’s most unfamiliar to them.
The book delves into the many misnomers associated with private practice and dispels the myths that lead to faulty decisions. For example, practitioners may train in one part of the country, then move to another area to open their practice, but assume that circumstances stay the same between the two areas. Yet health insurance regulations, attitudes surrounding health, demand for service and many other factors may be radically different. It’s essential they conduct their due-diligence before opening their doors.
Private Practice Survival Guide makes the paradoxical point that it’s necessary to define your “out-strategy” or breaking point early in your business planning. While it may change over time, knowing the point at which you have to fold can provide the measure by which you undertake goal setting, plan execution and more.
Seigel points out that the passion health practitioners often bring to their work will pay off in several ways. Entrepreneurs must tap into the labor of love behind their work to carry them through the inevitable rough times. For these professionals, their passion more than the monetary gain fuels their work ethic.
Private Practice Survival Guide makes a clear argument that the practices that thrive have invested the time and energy up front to figure out where they want to go and how they plan to get there from a business perspective. It then fills in all the ways to go about answering those fundamental questions.
Learn more at wellnessworksmp.com or brandonseigel.com.
