This week, I've been listening to Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and one idea keeps following me around. Most of us treat everything as equally important, so we end up chasing all of it and finishing none of it. His answer is to figure out the vital few things and let the rest go.
That fits the clinicians I work with like a glove.
If you are thinking about opening your own practice, I bet your mind is a browser with 97 tabs open and active. Billing software, marketing, office space, electronic health records, privacy, managing patient expectations, employees, malpractice coverage, a logo, and a nagging worry about regulations that tends to freeze people.
So here is my nudge. Before you worry about anything, figure out the essentials. On the legal side, they are fewer than you think. You need the right business structure, the right license for the services you plan to offer, a patient agreement that says what you do and what you charge, a basic HIPAA foundation (if HIPAA even applies at all), and a clear understanding of how any payer relationships or referral arrangements affect you. That is the vital few. Once those are solid, a lot of the other worries shrink, and some disappear.
Here's something you might not know about me. I never wanted to be a physician. Ever. I don't like nor do I understand science, and I really don't like blood. Medicine and I would not have gotten along. I also didn't grow up knowing I would become a lawyer of any sort, let alone a healthcare lawyer. I didn't even start law school until my mid-30s, right when my mom's health began to significantly decline from Parkinson's. Helping her navigate our broken healthcare system to get the care she needed showed me how much the system gets in the way, and I felt strongly about access to care from then on. Healthcare law turned out to be where I could actually do something about it, without getting my hands dirty, literally. Remember what I said about blood?
Anyway, I say all of this for the physicians and other providers who have been practicing for years and wonder if it's too late to change direction. It's not. You can follow your heart at any stage, and your other experiences outside of private practice make you better, not worse. Many of the clinicians I meet want to go out on their own because they went to school to take care of patients. They did not sign up to fight with insurance companies, decode regulations, or sit in meetings with other hospital staff talking about everything except the patient.
Now, a confession about essentials. Since I opened my practice, and still today, people tell me what I "have" to do to be successful. Start a podcast. Make videos. Be everywhere. I do not want to do those things, so I don't! Other things I would also skip, like posting on social media, but I do it because I have found it works and doesn't give me so much ick that I can't stand it. That's my personal test developed through trial and error. Does it work, and can I live with it? If the answer is no, it comes off my list, and I do my best not to feel guilty about that. Which works. Sometimes.
You can use the same test on your practice. You don't need to have everything figured out on day one. Plenty of good practices started with a handful of essentials and grew from there.
One more thing to set down is the idea that you have to pick one payment model and stay in it. Insurance, cash pay, and everything in between can be mixed and matched in lots of different ways. I promise that's true no matter what you read in a Facebook group or what ChatGPT told you. The right mix depends on your patients, your specialty, and your goals, and we can sort that out together.
If you are thinking about opening a practice, even if it is only a thought right now, reach out and tell me where you are. We will talk through what matters and what you can let go.
I highly recommend the book that inspired this post: Essentialism by Greg McKeown.
Kim
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This newsletter is for general information only and is not legal advice. It does not create an attorney-client relationship.