First Impressions
Does Dr. Ben really know how to run his practice growth?
“They were. They are,” said Ben. “I just feel like every time I get my problems solved, they regroup and come back at me.”
Carmen gazed at the flowers on the wall. “Can I be perfectly honest?”
“Of course!” Ben was surprised. “Aren’t you always perfectly honest with me?”
“I try to strike the balance between honest and supportive.” Carmen darted a look at Ben. Jonathan, worn out from walking, was half asleep. “I think you don’t know as much about running your practice as you need to. Maybe not as much as think you do, even.”
Ben frowned. “That’s honest, okay. Maybe not supportive.”
“I’m not saying anything about how you treat your patients. I’m just saying it’s not really scalable.”
Ben looked inquiringly at his wife.
“Managing a small practice where you see a few patients a day is not the same as managing a growing practice. You want growth, of course, and you’re a great chiropractor, so you get more patients — and you have a crisis while you figure out how to serve them all. Then you add a partner or another staff member, and you have a crisis while you figure out how to pay for them and how to manage them. Then you get more patients so there’s enough money to go around, but then you have another crisis figuring out how to keep track of everything. Your practice grows, but you sort of go from crisis to crisis.”
Ben looked back at the peaceful flowers in the painting. From crisis to crisis was a pretty fair description of how he felt.
“We want growth,” he said. “We need it, even. We have to think about Jonathan’s future — lessons, sports, even college tuition. And we have to think about our retirement, and let’s face it, we want and deserve a certain kind of lifestyle. I don’t think that going back to the way things were my first year in practice is the solution. You’re right, though — I felt a lot more competent back in those days.”
“What about the technology solutions we’ve talked about. Have you invested in them, yet?”
“We’ve done a few things,” Ben said slowly. Now that he thought of it, though, a lot of the new tools they’d talked about were still being talked about.
“Good,” Carmen smiled.
