Who Should You Ask for Help Running Your Plastic Surgery Practice?

Running a plastic surgery practice means making a lot of decisions that have nothing to do with performing surgery.

Should you hire another employee? Is payroll too high? Is a vendor worth what you're paying? Why aren't more consults turning into surgery? Is your employment agreement protecting the practice?

You probably have several people you can call for advice. The harder part is knowing who to ask.

Your attorney, accountant, marketing company, and practice consultant can all be valuable resources. But they aren't there to answer the same questions.

What Should You Ask Your Business Attorney?

A good business attorney is an important part of your professional team.

Business attorneys commonly help with contracts, employment matters, business formation, ownership agreements, leases, regulatory issues, and other areas involving legal risk. Scarinci Hollenbeck recently published a helpful overview of what a business attorney does and the types of decisions where legal counsel should be involved.

For a plastic surgery practice, that might mean asking:

• Does this employment agreement protect the practice?

• What should be included in this partnership agreement?

• Are there legal risks with terminating this employee?

• What should we change in this vendor contract before signing it?

But what if your question is whether you need that employee in the first place? Or whether that vendor is actually worth the cost?

That's where the question starts moving from legal advice into practice management.

What Does a Plastic Surgery Practice Consultant Help With?

A plastic surgery consultant focuses on how the practice actually runs.

That can include staffing, expenses, workflows, patient experience, scheduling, consult conversion, recruiting, vendor costs, and growth.

Take hiring as an example.

Your attorney can help make sure you're following employment laws and that your agreements protect the practice.

A practice management consultant can help determine whether you need another employee, what role you actually need, and whether the practice can support the additional payroll.

The same applies to vendors. Your attorney can review the contract. Your practice consultant can help determine whether you should be spending the money at all.

Both perspectives can be important. They're just answering different questions.

When Should You Use a Practice Management Consultant?

You don't have to wait until something is seriously wrong.

Practice management consulting (although we prefer to think of it as business consulting) can be helpful when you know something isn't working, but aren't sure why.

Maybe revenue is growing but profit isn't. The team feels busy, but work still isn't getting done. Consult volume is strong, but conversion is inconsistent. Payroll keeps climbing. Or you keep fixing the same problem only to have it show up again.

This is where an outside look at the practice can be useful.

The problem you see isn't always where the problem starts.

Low consult conversion may not start in the consult. A staffing problem may actually be a workflow problem. Adding another employee to an inefficient process may simply make that process more expensive.

The goal should be to figure out what's actually happening before deciding how to fix it.

Why Does Plastic Surgery Experience Matter?

The fundamentals of running a good business apply to any industry. But plastic surgery has its own moving parts.

A plastic surgery consultant should understand the relationship between inquiries, consultations, and surgery. They should understand the role of the Patient Care Coordinator, cosmetic versus insurance based services, patient financing, scheduling, surgeon time, OR access, and the patient decision process.

That context matters when you're trying to figure out why something isn't working.

Advice that makes sense for another business, or even another type of medical practice, may not make sense for yours.

Do You Need an Attorney, Accountant, Marketing Company, or Practice Consultant?

Sometimes the answer is more than one.

A practice consultant shouldn't replace your attorney. Your attorney shouldn't replace your accountant. And your marketing company probably shouldn't be deciding how to staff your practice.

There will also be times when those advisors need to work together.

For example, a practice consultant may identify an issue with your staffing structure that needs legal review. Your accountant may identify an expense that's getting out of hand, while your practice consultant helps determine what's driving it. Your marketing company may be generating plenty of inquiries, while the real problem is what happens after those inquiries reach the practice.

Knowing when to bring someone else into the conversation is part of giving good advice.

How Do You Choose a Plastic Surgery Practice Consultant?

Start with the problems you actually want help solving.

Then ask whether the consultant has experience solving those problems in plastic surgery practices.

Do they understand how your practice operates? Do they look for what's causing the problem before recommending a solution? Will they work with the attorney, accountant, marketing team, and other advisors you already have?

And just as importantly, will they tell you when something falls outside their expertise?

PS² Practice Management works exclusively with board certified plastic surgeons and plastic surgery practices. That focus allows us to look at the business through the lens of how plastic surgery practices actually operate, while recognizing when someone else on your professional team needs to be part of the conversation.

You don't need one person who claims to have every answer.

You need to know who to ask.