Whether you’re new to clinic ownership, or you’re opening your fourth location, opening a new outpatient private practice is a challenge. Depending on the nature of the expenses, it can be months, or even upwards of a year, before you break even on your investment. But with a little frugality, you can most definitely pull it off. In this article, we’re going to share 5 tips for opening a new outpatient private practice location.

 

1) Keep equipment costs low

 

When opening a new private practice location, do your best to avoid splurging on the latest and greatest equipment. There’s no need to spend more than $1000 on an upscale massage table when your RMT has a portable massage table that they never leave the house without. Likewise, you go without the high-end ultrasound machine and settle for a handheld unit—at least until the cash flow begins to pick up speed.

 

2) You can market your new clinic for free

 

One of the greatest things about the internet is its ability to provide you with a wide array of simple, cost-effective marketing tools. For example, it costs you nothing to create a Facebook Business Page and begin connecting with your local community. Additionally, you can create a free Google My Business listing and ensure that your new private practice location appears in Google searches.

 

3) You can outsource some tasks

 

Some tasks, such as billing, can be incredibly time consuming, which is why many clinic owners who are opening a new clinic location choose to outsource some of these tasks to qualified professionals.

 

Click here to read about the benefits of billing through your practice management software.

 

While your EMR system may have the ability to track and submit claims, the process can still be tricky (particularly for American clinics). Knowing this, clinics with higher patient volumes tend to hire a full-time medical billing specialist to oversee all of their claims submissions. But for newer private practice locations, a billing specialist’s salary may be too much to shoulder, and this is why many clinic owners decide to outsource this task to a dedicated billing company.

 

4) Hire part-time staff

 

Not all of your staff members, particularly the therapists, need to be full-time staff members. The reality is that it’s difficult for a new business to afford full-time salaries when they don’t have a large budget to play around with. This makes in necessary to run a tight ship, and keep expenses as low as possible. That said, part-time therapists make an appealing case.

 

There are few things that affect a clinic’s finances more than patient volume. And when there isn’t a constant flow of patients, adding another full-time therapist to your payroll at the onset may not make these most sense.

 

5) Stick with the same service providers

 

If you’re opening a second clinic location, it’s good to touch base with your current service providers and inquire about any multi-site discounts. For example, Practice Perfect offers users with more than one clinic location a discounted monthly rate per site.

 

Another reason for sticking with the same service providers is that you’re familiar with them, and you’ll be in a better position to instruct new staff members given your prior knowledge.

 

Click here to read our article about how to quickly train staff members on a new EMR software.

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