Name of Practice: Quad City Neurosurgical Associates, P.C.
Location:Quad Cities, which includes Davenport and Bettendorf, in eastern Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline, in western Illinois.
Number of neurosurgeons: Five
Number of employees:11
Number of medical centers served: Three, with applications submitted for a fourth facility.
Approximate number of patients cared for per week: 220
Practice philosophy Most innovative back office management solution Approach to external relationships Biggest investment in recent years As our practice grows in size, scope and geographical reach, our existing management information system needs to expand as well. We have prepared a strategic plan focused on our practice’s future technology needs, such as telemedicine, voice recognition, electronic medical records, internal and external communications and data management. The cost to implement this plan is significant, and we are organizing an implementation calendar to help us manage the expenditures involved. Advice to young neurosurgeons Future of neurosurgical private practice Closing thoughts
Today, patients are confronted with many new sources of information regarding treatment opportunities. We strive to win each and every patient by exercising two important principles: 1) Provide care to every patient, and 2) meet the expectations of referring physicians by serving their patients well and providing timely, efficient follow up concerning our treatment plan.
We strive to continually implement improvements to back office management strategies. Some of those solutions have had a greater impact on practice operations than others, such as providing educational and training opportunities to our clinical and administrative staff, and reducing account receivable processing time through the use of electronic claims submission and bank lock boxes for payments. In the next fiscal year, we hope to implement a new practice information systems network that will permit greater levels of information sharing.
We believe that positive relationships with external parties are imperative to our practice’s future growth and success. We recently established a somewhat disciplined approach to nurturing and managing those relationships. The process begins with the collection of data regarding referrals, demographic trends and strategic plans. That information is then analyzed and developed into our own strategic plan. A key element to the plan is an analysis that identifies our practice’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. We then set out to establish and further develop relationships with strategic partners. Those relationships bear fruit when both parties clearly understand how they can benefit. This process also helps us clearly identify where we should expend our limited resources in order to maximize our gain.
Recently, we have added several staff members to our team. We recognized that to better compete in the marketplace, we needed to expand the number of physicians, and hire an experienced executive director. Given our recent growth, concern has been expressed that the cramped office hinders the comfort of our patients and limits our ability to be efficient. To combat these concerns, we are building a new, more spacious medical facility, with construction slated to finish in January 2000.
Remain professionally agile and willing to accept and modify your thinking and behavior to support the changes taking place in our specialty. Remember you have much to learn, as your education to this point has only taught the science of medicine.
Competition for patients will become more intense as the boundaries that separate neurosurgery from other specialties continue to blur. By creating coordinated care management systems, we can provide patients with access to the most efficient and advanced medical care available. Also, promoting our practices to our referral source and their patients will become more important. These factors, combined with the simple cost of operating a medical practice, will further encourage the evolution of larger neuroscience-oriented practices.
It is important we recognize that while our practices allow us the opportunity to do something that we truly enjoy – namely practice medicine – they must be run as professional businesses if we are to survive and thrive. Through the use of tactics such as strategic planning, financial budgeting and forecasting, and professional business management, we will see our practices continue to grow and prosper.