AMA VICDOC Spring 2023 - Magazine - Page 47

PARTNER CONTENT
PRACTICAL TIPS
TO BUILD YOUR
BUSINESS IN 2021
-
REPORT ROGER MENDELSON, CEO PRUSHKA FAST DEBT RECOVERY
Few will be sad to wave goodbye to 2020. Now is the time to look ahead. Such disruption has
changed the way successful businesses think and operate and there is real consensus that
we won’t simply go back to the old ways.
My experience comes from building a business which has reinvented itself several times over
a 45-year history and from being at the coal face of seeing business failure at close range.
Medical practise is a business and as such, is subject to the same economic and technological
trends as all businesses. Be open to change and equate change with improvement.
INVOLVE KEY STAFF
AIM FOR BEST PRACTICE
There is no rule book for the review process.
It is basically exploration. Your staff, collectively,
probably know more about your practice than
you do.
No doubt you strive for best practice medical
services. One area which our business observes
on a daily basis often needs improving - few
practices operate best practice credit and billing
functions. Improving them is not difficult and it
involves minimal expense. It just requires the
will to seek some advice and to follow it.
Listen to them, encourage them to think about
the issues and to have their say. The more views
contributing, the better.
The best way to do this is at round table
discussions. I suggest a series of them,
each to be no more than one hour.
Invite your accountant to join some.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
I suggest two main focus areas:
»How to cut costs by at least 15 per cent
over 12 months. This will involve seeking out
efficiencies, by greater use of technology,
reducing wage costs, by better rostering and
perhaps examining ways to reduce rent.
»How to lift revenue. Your working life is limited
to a finite number of professional hours. How
can the practice lift the daily revenue? Should
you concentrate on particular services?
And if it is relatively easy to adopt best practice
in this area, how many other practice functions
can also be improved at minimal cost?
During the pre-COVID era, most practices held
enough financial slack to allow for inefficiencies.
In the current COVID world, with uncertainty
potentially hanging over the economy and
normal way of life for years, there will be no
room for complacency.
Medical practices don’t usually fail, in the
insolvency sense. But sometimes they
underperform in failing to provide the business
owners with maximum potential return.
Everyone who runs their own medical service
should strive for the satisfaction that comes
from captaining a business which is operated
on best practice principles.
The writer is CEO of Prushka Fast Debt Recovery Pty Ltd and is principal of Mendelsons National Debt
Collection Lawyers Pty Ltd. Prushka acts for in excess of 58,000 small to medium size businesses and practices
across Australia and operates on the basis of NO RECOVERY – NO CHARGE. The writer is also the author of The
Ten Mistakes Businesses Make and How to Avoid Them and Business Survival, both published by New Holland
Publishers. Prushka is a partner of AMA Victoria and offers AMA members an ongoing discount of 10 per cent
on its products and services. It has been assisting medical practices with debt collection for 45 years.

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