I had promised previously in this blog that I would address some of the techniques that I have used over the years to accumulate my “medical millions”.  The principle I will discuss today is very simple actually, but I have found that many find it very difficult to implement.

This is a technique that I have used unconsciously and instinctively since a very early age.  Consequently, it has made me and my business highly productive.

A little background first, though, by way of explanation.  Although I was and still am a diehard Boston Celtics fan, I did read an autobiographical memoir written by Pat Riley about his days coaching and managing the LA Lakers during their heyday years (i.e. the 1980s) when they were trading championships with the Celtics year after year.

He discussed how difficult it was to motivate superstar athletes when they had achieved so much success.  Despite the fact that these stars, including Magic Johnson most notably, were obviously very motivated to get to that peak level in their careers,  achieving their ultimate goal of a championship made them less hungry and harder to motivate to go for that goal again.

Pat Riley’s solution was simple yet brilliant.  He would go to each player and review their statistics (in terms of points, assists, free throws, etc.) for the previous year.

Then he would ask them one simple question: “Can you give me just 1% more?”  Unanimously, they would shrug their shoulders and say, “Sure, Coach. That’s easy.”

What Riley found was that psychologically his players could give him more effort because he was only asking for a small improvement.  He also knew that if he could get each of his players to improve even by only 1% (they almost all improved significantly more than 1% over the season), the compound effect on the whole team would be exponential.

Back to medical practice.  In my office, I always kept track of my patient load.  I could tell day to day, week to week, and month to month how many patients I saw.

Then, I would approach my staff and look at my schedule and see how and where I could see one more patient per day. Even the most recalcitrant staffers who tried to manipulate the schedules of our various providers so they would be out of the office exactly at 5 P.M. could not argue with the small request.

But I knew the numbers.  Remember, this was private practice and I could only “eat what I killed”, or profit only by the patients that came into the office, not by just having the office.

So to simplify, let’s say I only cleared an average of only $50 per patient, considering payer mix and coding variables.  That one extra patient per day would mean $250 per week extra, $1000 per month extra and approximately $12,000 per year more to my bottom line.

Not too bad for a seemingly small effort!  This amount would obviously compound further over the following years.

After a period of time and once everyone was used to that extra patient, I would repeat the process again and again and again.  I and my nurse got more and more efficient.

We constantly tweaked our flow and interactions to improve patient care and efficiency.  In my practice group, I was always the most productive doctor by a country mile.  Also, when I looked at others in my medical community in my role in our local physician-hospital organization, I saw only one or two other primary care docs even in my ballpark.

Small changes compounded over time can make big differences down the line. I know everyone knows that intellectually, but very few are willing to make the changes necessary to accomplish the task.

They would look at my patient load and say “I could never see as many patients as you do”.  My response was always “Yes, you can! It’s really not that hard.”

In a near-future blog post, I will talk more about how to enhance reimbursement and income within the patient load you already see on the road to your “medical millions”!