The medical field is pretty important. If ever we should put our collective heads together and figure something out, it’s how to make sure independent practitioners can make a nice living while helping us all live happy, healthy lives. It is with this thought that I marvel at how an efficiently run medical practice can thrive in a tough economic climate where everyone is broke, insurance pays less and less to them and the value of healthcare may be even further devalued through legislation.

I go to a guy I’ve known for years now. He’s part of a collective of a dozen doctors who all have their specialty and refer patients to one another. I now bring my dad there.  With my dad, I’m going a bit deeper in to the system than I needed to for myself and that has opened up a world of insight that I had not seen before in spite of going there at least a dozen times over the years for check-ups, illnesses, etc.  These guys have their s*#+ on lock. Their appointment books are held in an electronic calendar like many of us but does yours call a day before to remind your client of your appointment?  That has
to bring down no shows and increase billables without taking up a second of staff time.  Does yours link the visit with methods of payment and history?  These guys get paid every penny they can honestly squeeze and have access to your entire history on a laptop. Yeah. They all walk around from room to room with laptops where they both review and enter info.  Gone are the days of a pile of carefully hole punched papers and ekg streams. It’s all scanned, jpeged and accessible from a server.

Now I look at my own business. We work in various sectors of the music business but they all involve dealing with creatives. Dealing with creatives, especially in Miami, means missed meetings (dude was that today?) And a lot of conversations about how to get around an anemic (read non-existent) budget while tackling a declining market.  Well, I
meet with people, I help make their lives better and I’m dealing with a full-on assault on cash flow. So what can I learn from an indy medical practice?

First, cut the bull. You have to be selective about who you meet with. If you spend your day chasing pipe dreams and random thoughts instead of executing a cohesive plan and entertaining legitimate new projects, you are leaking valuable time like the broken pipe spewing oil into the gulf. Second, be as efficient as possible with the management of information.  Just as in the doctor’s office, history means something and can help you make better decisions. I deal with a lot of people
and new ones all the time. It’s good to be able to recall what has transpired in the past, digest it and draw inferences from patterns instead of just from vibe. Instinct is great but it’s accuracy goes up when you complement it with solid history. Third, always be going somewhere with something. The doctors bounce from one room to another executing their appointment and furthering the whole health thing.  From diagnosis to treatment, they are always moving things forward on a massive scale. I like that as a premise and try to make sure that every minute I spend working is a means to an end.

So, doctors spend their time wisely (with patients who actually pay something), track their usage of time expeditiously and are always moving issues forward. I think I can apply that to any business, even to something as erratic as my precious music industry.