Adding a new, complementary service to your existing business structure can help increase your revenue during your regular business hours. This is especially helpful for businesses that feel they have reached a maturity or decline stage.
Wolgast has worked with several doctors who’ve implemented ancillary services to remodel or add onto their medical or dental practices. From physical therapy to cosmetic surgery, there are countless options to help add revenue for a practice. And the best part, it’s done during regular business hours without additional work on the physician’s or dentist’s part.
With an idea as brilliant as this, why isn’t everyone doing it? Well, integrating ancillary services isn’t necessarily right for all practices. A business manager and the doctor must do their due diligence before making changes to their practice or their building. Things to consider include assessing current staffing capabilities, legal and ethical issues and how the doctor will be able to maintain his or her high level of patient care. It mostly boils down to your type of practice, the capacity of your staff, and your patient’s needs. Like with most any other business decision, a feasibility study is the best place to start when investigating the option of an ancillary service. A CPA that is focused on medical or dental business would be the best choice to start your feasibility study.
In summary, adding ancillary services can be a very profitable option for practices that feel that they have grown as much as they can under their current business structure and are committed to the due diligence process of identifying patient needs, reviewing current practice operations, assessing current staffing capabilities, keeping in mind any legal and ethical issues, and ultimately remaining focused on providing the best patient care available.
Michael Shepard, Dr., Ph. has published a white paper “Adding Ancillary Services to Medical/Dental Practices (Making the Correct Decisions)” discussing in more detail the ins and outs of adding ancillary services and the caveats involved. In the paper you will learn more about ancillary service strategy, cautions, business decisions, and legal considerations.
