11 Facts About Private Practice No One Taught You in Graduate School
Just the facts as I see them:
1. Private Practice is a business
2. Dealing with managed care organizations is difficult, time consuming and frustrating.
3. Being an excellent clinician is not enough.
4. You need adminstrative support if you hope to make a decent living.
5. It will be easier to grow a specialty practice.
6. You will need to get out of your office and meet people in your community if you hope to grow your practice.
7. Managed care and insurance rates are not going up.
8. Potential clients are looking for you on the internet and you need to be present there.
9. Marketing is necessary if you want to succeed in private practice. It can be done ethically and effectively.
10. Your clients don't care what kind of degree you have or how long you were in school. They only care that you can help them with their problems.
11. We need to communicate the value of the work that we do to a wider community if we hope to thrive as a profession and as individual professionals. We talk a lot amongst ourselves and not enough to others who can learn from and benefit from our knowledge and services.
Just the post I needed to read…thanks for sharing that. Found it via Twitter. I just started my practice in April, and I know it will take a long time, but it sure can get frustrating quickly.
Rhett
So true! Thanks for these concise and relevant points!
Another great concise post…it is a great boost and a reminder that we serve people, and need to meet the customers where they are at, rather than staying in a stuffy office…very cool ideas. No managed care rates are not going up and, you know, I am tired of hearing from people that if the clt can’t make the deductible or the co-pay it is grist for the therapeutic mill….you know, I pay $1470 a MONTH for health insurance ($16K) a year..excuse me if I cant afford two chiropractor’s visits a week (one for my husband and one for me) every month, as we are aging and our musculosketal systems are stressed now…that is $240 more a month for health care…this is not a problem from my past…it is a problem, of the here and now TODAY and my bank account.
These are great tips! I’m in a field (music therapy) where lots of clinicians are starting their own practice and have no idea where to start! I’ll be bookmarking this article to share with others. Thanks!
~Kimberly
I just spent part of my weekend listening in to the telesummit that Susan presented on and checked this site out because of that. Thank goodness some real info and no more floaty, abstract ideas of what starting your practice is really like was shared! And real tips that actually made sense! Thank you! I know this isn’t directly in relation to the above article, but I’m just excited about the real life knowledge! Finally! I’m just starting out(newly licensed) and am just so happy I’m finally getting some information I can run with!!
Mandy, thanks for your kind words. I’m all about real life knowledge that we can use right away. Run and build a terrific practice
!
Great review of 11 important points. Thanks for the article and your inspiring words!
Smart and ethical marketing, as well as being able to package our services effectively and offer them to our ideal clients: that is the way to go. But it does take someone who has been before us to guide us on the journey. Thanks for doing that with your blog, Susan!