Are you familiar with the Chicago Restoration Hardware?
The owner purchased this whole deserted building loft and updated everything. He remodeled and created this awesome environment. Customers can come in and browse around. But in the middle of the building, there is also a restaurant that people can enjoy great food, wine, and drink. At the same time, they can look around. Everything can be done.
Niche Strategy
So why did I decide to speak about this? For you, as a private practice owner, something you should consider is to create a niche service. Unless you have something unique that you can offer to your patients, it is very hard for you to create a concierge practice. To do that, the first element is a niche. What is your niche? What is your unique service or treatment solution that you can offer your patients?
Valuable Resources
Great additional resources that you should look into are Michael Porter’s five competitive forces. They can help you understand strategy. The Five Forces will help you understand the environment that can affect your decision-making process for a strategy to build your hybrid concierge service.
There are the threats – the power of the supplier and the buyer, and obviously comparative rivals already in the market. So if you can research a little bit into the Five Forces, it will help you understand about concierge marketing and concierge medical practice.
Also, I am sure you are familiar with this, but Doctor Chan Kim wrote a great article about blue ocean strategy versus red ocean strategy. If you are not familiar, that is another great area to look into. As long as you practice in an insurance-based model without a specific niche, you are pretty much suffering. You are struggling in red ocean market i.e. an insurance-based model.
To all the specialists, if you are based on insurance reimbursement and are heavily depending on that, you are pretty much in a very tight competition. You are in a red ocean. You would have to play the volume game. Instead of a quality game, you are struggling so much to get more, more, more patients. Because your reimbursement per patient is so low, you have to work your butt off to meet your revenue demand every day, every week, and every month to play the volume game. Could you really provide the best quality service to your patients?
It is very hard unless you spend extra for more employees, more customer service, etc. It is very hard to provide quality care for your patients in that model. So look into that blue ocean strategy. Look into the five forces of the competitive market. And then again look into the hybrid concierge model where you can provide the best solution without hassles of an insurance network.
That is what I am coaching other colleagues and specialists in. I help you build that lucrative profitable practice model, while you provide the best care for your patients.
To your wealth & success,
TJ