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| Dear Friend,
Sometimes, all that's needed is a change in perspective.
Here's a different way to approach attaining your business goals, a different way of thinking about structuring a deal in the healthcare industry.
For example, let’s say you’re the leader of a hospital-based group and you’re planning on expanding your business to neighboring facilities. You begin approaching facility administrators, trying to see when current contracts expire in order for you to bid on those contracts and displace the current group.
That’s certainly one way of approaching growth and there is nothing wrong with it.
But, at the same time, are there other ways of getting your head around the same objective, the objective being expanding your business?
For example, might another approach be acquiring the currently contracted group serving your target facility? Or, perhaps merging them into your group without any acquisition at all?
Or, perhaps you might be able to split off members from inside the target group so that you can take over the group, without the need to acquire them? In other words, the strategy is to cause the “target” to crumble from within.
On another tack, are there ways to put pressure on the facility to turn to you, as opposed to you turning to it?
I’m simply saying as opposed to looking at deals in any context in the "usual way,” think about the greater goal. And then think about alternative ways of achieving that goal.
And while you’re at it, think about employing more than one strategy at a time (i.e., leverage off of a combined arms effect) to multiply the chances of achieving your goal. |
| | | Business Life in the Time of Coronavirus Mini-Series
The coronavirus crisis caused a short term economic crisis for many medical groups. Our mini-series shows you the way out. Plus, many of the concepts discussed are applicable during both good times and bad.
[If you haven't already seen them, follow this link to watch our entire series.] |
| | Watch Tuesday's video here, or just keep reading below for a revised, more polished transcript:
I recently read about Southwest Airlines and its business strategy during Covid.
All of its competitors, the competitive airlines, that is, are in deep trouble, borrowing money to stay afloat, thinking about how to survive.
Yet, for months, Southwest has been sending out scouts looking at cities to serve. How much business goes on there? Is there another draw to those communities? Southwest is busy working on an expansion of the network of destinations to which they fly.
In essence, Southwest has used Covid as an opportunity to grow their business. They're playing to win. Their competitors are playing simply to survive.
So, of course there's an analogy here.
Many medical groups are simply playing the strategy to survive. They're protecting what they have. They're protecting their referral sources. They're protecting their contracted facilities.
What about you? Are you using your competitors' bad luck to expand your business, to take what they have? Are you developing new facilities? Are you developing new opportunities?
Don't fall prey to an expanded sense of the "colleague's disease," in which there's something abhorrent about taking away someone else's opportunities. That's what business growth
is about.
Grow your business. Grow your top line.
Don't just protect what you have, or you might find out that you don't have it any longer.
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| | How to Deploy the Secret Sauce of Opportunistic Strategy
Webinar On Demand
They say that COVID-19 has changed the world, creating the "new normal." Many of your colleagues and many hospital administrators are running scared.
Others, leaders like you, know that crisis means opportunity.
Let me provide you with the strategic tools and insights that you need in order to seize opportunities, whether they’re in the context of your current business relationships, the expansion of your business activities, or the creation of new ventures.
You will learn:
•Defense as a defective default: It’s necessary, but not sufficient.
•Exploiting weakness: Drop the guilt and identify opportunity.
•Flat line negotiation is fatal: Understand its myths and limitations.
•Negotiation reality: Learn to identify and deploy on multiple planes to affect the outcome.
•Maneuver: Harness the power of maneuver, both in overall strategy and in specific negotiation strategy.
Others see a crisis and freeze in fear. Learn how to see the opportunities and obtain the tools to increase your odds of obtaining them.
The price to attend is $479. The cost of not attending is astronomical. |
| | | Wednesday - Don’t Let An Acronym DictateYour Business Structure
- Medical Group MinuteWatch the video here, or just keep reading
below for a slightly polished transcript:
Is an MSO right for me? How about a CIN?
There’s an old saying that a person doesn’t really want a drill, they want a hole. I actually think there's yet another level of thinking – why do they want the hole? Perhaps it's to hang
a painting.
The same idea holds true with many healthcare structures, whether it's an MSO
(a management services organization), an IPA (and independent practice association),
an RBMG (a sort-of cousin to an IPA), a CIN (a clinically integrated network), and so on.
In our metaphor, none of them are the painting on the wall. In fact, they’re not even the hole.
What they are is the drill. They’re tools that describe a method of getting you to the business entity or outcome that you seek to create or achieve. They’re not ends in and of themselves.
On the one hand, you can view this as a mini-lecture on the fact that business structures are tools to achieve your desired ends.
But the real takeaway for you is somewhat different: What’s most important for you is to first decide what it is, on a business level, that you’re trying to achieve.
Forget for the moment (but only for the moment!) about legal structure and compliance and the fact that it's a "fill in the blank" such as an MSO.
Instead, simply concentrate on what it is, bottom line, that you want to achieve.
Then, and only then, should we ask the question of what tool or tools . . . the specific structure or structures . . . can be applied to get you there. |
| | | Listen to the podcast here, or just keep reading for the transcript.
As I've written before, all across corporate America companies are laying off full-time employees and either replacing them with part-time workers or outsourcing their labor needs to staffing companies. In essence, they are creating a class of "perma-temps" with decreasing job security.
But of course, in healthcare, physicians are rushing to hospital employment and to jobs with large medical groups. Go figure.
The public school system in this country wasn't founded to broadly educate, its purpose was to socialize children, making them good citizens and, even more so, good employees who knew how to show up on time, to do what they were told, and to come back the next day. In return, there was the "promise" of lifetime employment or, at least employment until "retirement" which was not something that was designed for one's "golden years;" rather, it was retirement as in replacement, replacement just like an old machine.
But today, employers reward for the value you create. The factory worker, whether in what is readily recognized as a factory or one which looks, to outsiders, like a medical clinic or hospital, who simply shows up on time, does what he or she is told (you know, follows protocols) and then clocks out at the end of the shift, creates no real value in comparison with the next worker.
As a result, his or her employer will always be seeking someone who will do that job for less.
Today, there's no longer even the "promise" of lifetime employment. "Retirement" as in replacement, replacement just like an old machine, is as far off as the next layoff or the
next outsourcing.
It's creativity and leadership and true value creation, value being measured not by the person delivering it but by the person receiving it, that separates one from the worker bees. Maybe not in the eyes of your current employer – but so what, you're not chained down. You've only been told that you are. Perhaps told so by yourself.
The same dynamic plays out at the medical group level as well. Groups that don't create new value for the parties with whom they contract or interact, from the value that a radiology group provides to a hospital pursuant to an exclusive contract, to the value in a relationship between a surgeon and a referring internist, are angling for replacement.
You're not damaged. You're not victims. Unless you want to be. But that's another story.
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| | | Calibrate Your Compass
Read our exclusive RedPaper to guide you through this evolving situation.
The coronavirus crisis caused a short-term economic crisis for many medical groups. Our RedPaper shows you the way out. Plus, many of the concepts discussed are applicable during both good times and bad.
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| | Help Us Help You With Helpful Content
What tailored content would you most like to see during this
time? How can we focus on solutions to your most pressing strategic concerns?
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| | | | We all hear, and most of us say, that the pace of change in healthcare is quickening. That means that the pace of required decision-making is increasing, too. Unless, that is, you want to take the “default” route. That’s the one is which you let someone else make the decisions that impact you; you’re just along for the ride. Of course, playing a bit part in scripting your own future isn’t the smart route to stardom. But despite your own best intentions, perhaps it’s your medical group’s governance structure that’s holding you back.
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| In fact, it’s very likely that the problem is systemic. The Medical Group Governance Matrix introduces a simple four-quadrant diagnostic tool to help you find out. It then shows you how to use that tool to build your better, more profitable future. Get your free copy Free.
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| | | | Whenever you're ready, here are 4 ways I can help you and your business:
1. Download a copy of The Success Prescription. My book, The Success Prescription provides you with a framework for thinking about your success. Download a copy of The Success Prescription here.
2. Be a guest on “Wisdom. Applied. Podcast.” Although most of my podcasts involve me addressing an important point for your success, I’m always looking for guests who’d like to be interviewed about their personal and professional achievements and the lessons learned. Email me if you’re interested in participating.
3. Book me to speak to your group or organization. I’ve spoken at dozens of medical group, healthcare organization, university-sponsored, and private events on many topics such as The Impending Death of Hospitals, the strategic use of OIG Advisory Opinions, medical group governance, and succeeding at negotiations. For more information about a custom presentation for you, drop us a line.
4. If You’re Not Yet a Client, Engage Me to Represent You. If you’re interested in increasing your profit and managing your risk of loss, email me to connect directly. |
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