Certainly, patient care within your medical specialty involves many complicated and complex issues.
But that doesn’t mean that the way that your practice’s business relates to hospitals, referral sources and patients has to be complicated. And, it doesn’t mean that the way that the arrangements among your practice’s owner physicians, or between your practice entity and its employed or subcontracted physicians, has to be complicated.
Albert Einstein’s comment that “everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler” might appear obvious, but if it is, then why are so many relationships, so many pronouncements, and so many explanations so complex?
I think it’s because although at first it seems counterintuitive, oftentimes we make things complex because it’s easier than making them simple.
Simple is actually a lot of work, especially in a complex world. But because relationships are based upon communication, complexity clouds the message, it doesn’t clarify it. The object is to advance your business interests – to make you more profitable and to manage your risk of loss. It’s to transform your business in an accelerated manner.
So, certainly, business structures are required and agreements must be drafted, and relationships must be created, but it’s those structures that are only as complex as minimally required — in other words, those that are as simple as possible but not simpler — that serve you best, just as are those agreements which simply and clearly delineate expectations.
For example, consider a partnership governance structure with so many committees and subcommittees all designed as checks and balances when, at its essence, the real issue is if there’s no trust among the partners. The added levels of complexity do nothing to enable the business of the practice to grow – in fact they stymie it.
I know it’s a complex idea, but strive for simple.
