Bleak prospects, but . . . 

Healthcare viability

needs hospitals to

 be re-invented

     Like a rotting apple in the middle of a basketful, poor management skills can breed themselves into a virtual (and often literal) sea of incompetency before anyone realizes they’ve been overtaken by dumb and dumber, suffering damage that’s too late to reverse.

     DOCTOR BUSINESS is a book I wrote fifteen years ago after more than twenty years of healthcare management consulting experience. It extolled the virtues of entrepreneurial thinking and business management techniques as essential to successful medical practice development.

     The dynamics and principles of that book still apply today, but — with hindsight — I can now see that I failed to recognize the ever-building tsunami of hospital administration ineptness which was emerging and gathering force at the time.  

     Power-crazed hospitals  — rather then entrepreneurially adapt themselves to technology and market-place changes, and do a better job of running their own businesses —  have instead stuck their noses into commandeering business-unsavvy physician partnerships and professional associations.

     Doctors who lack business sense have been buying into hospital physician relations programs that infiltrate and end up controlling their practices. In the process, many of these business ability-shy hospitals have effectively choked off all prospects for medical practices to function as viable business entities.

     Compounding the antics of small-minded hospital muckity-mucks, the new Obamacare health system will have the same kind of disastrous financial and healthcare environment impact as the millions of gallons of oil that continue leaking into our planet’s seas.

     It’s hard, nearly impossible, to excel as any kind of business manager when what it is that you’re managing comes under the scrutiny and control of a bigger, less capable entity that’s operating at cross purposes with your pursuits and interests.

     For more than the past two decades, many hospitals have been being run by groups of administrators whose sole qualifications are typically that they are or were wannabe physicians. Many are med school or government or academia dropouts.

     Some have MBA and MS degrees tucked in their pockets, but it’s my best guess that the vast majority have no meaningful small business experience or sense of reality.

     Wielding limited skill-sets, these people continue to assume controlling positions with running the business affairs of medical practices without having any solid small business management experience or expertise.

     The result, not unlike most government programs, is frequent failure.

     I have had up-close-and-personal vantage points to witness half a dozen hospital failures (and am presently watching another in the making) and the demise of a dozen physician-run medical practices at the hands of intrusive hospital controls.

     Medical practices are small businesses. They need to be run like small businesses in order to survive and thrive. It’s in the best interests of all Americans that this happen.

    But birthing a competitive free market healthcare system doesn’t mean clamping down on medical practices or trying to consolidate all insurance entities under a government umbrella, or having politicians control physician and treatment choices.

     It does mean doctors need to learn more about business and accept that role, and it does mean that hospital administrators need to back off trying to manipulate affiliated practices and start driving more energy into re-inventing themselves to ride marketplace changes more effectively, and anticipate those to come.  

302.933.0116   Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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