Six insider business tips to consider when opening a private medical practice

Here are six considerations you should make while journeying to become your own boss. 

Most physicians use their own names when naming their private medical practices, following that with their speciality (MD or PhD). Although there are positive effects to naming your private practice like this -- self branding makes sure that no one else has the same name -- there are negatives ones, too. The major negative effect is the impact your name will have if you want to sell your practice in the future. If you've self-branded it, it'll require a re-branding by whomever purchases it. Here are a few common questions to ask yourself when naming: 

• Do I want my location or city name included? 
• What logo do I want to incorporate? 
• How important is it to include my own name?
• Is there practice name I want available? 
• Is the domain name I want available? 

Sure, you graduated from med school, but you'll have to develop a business-like mind when opening your own private practice. Developing a business plan is an important step to successfully starting your new business. A business plan will help you make major decisions about your business's services, structures, pricing, and more. If you're asking the bank to help finance your practice, it'll be mandatory you have one. Either way, you should still take the time to develop a detailed plan that includes all the following elements in it. 

• Cover sheet
• Executive summary
• Description of your business
• Your target market
• Your competition
• Operations plan
• The management team
• Marketing strategy 
• Financials 
• Risk analysis

Becoming your own boss means recruiting and hiring people who make up your medical team. Hiring the wrong people is expensive considering the time you'll invest in them to learn all your systems. Instead of rushing into making hiring decisions, take a look at how to hire the right people for your practice. It'll pay off in the end. 

Most physicians end up receiving loans from the bank to finance their private practice. With that in mind, it's important to create conservative three-year projections and have a line of credit that'll cover your private practice for at least the first three months (even if your business generates revenue). Keep in mind that insurance carriers don't always pay right away, either. Whether you're paying for magazines in your patient waiting room or a PGM Billing system, you'll want to have every penny accounted for while being financially prepared for the unexpected.

In addition to knowing how to tactfully deal with patient insurance carriers, you'll want to make sure you have the best liability insurance provider for your business. Here are six vital questions you should ask yourself before getting liability insurance for your private medical practice. This is very important, so focus as much attention as you can on this part of this process so that you know what you're covered for and how. 

Although it's important to pick a business name that sticks out in the market, your marketing work isn't finished there. You should never consider marketing as an expense; it's an investment. Make sure that you promote services and specialities by relating them to solutions. Make sure to avoid these five marketing mistakes when developing your private medical practice. Afterward, check out this video for a detailed blueprint on how to come up with a business growth blueprint and marketing plan for your private practice. 

Have you successfully starting your own private medical practice? What other advice and tips do you have?