The common belief, and it may be quite true, is that change is the greatest cause of stress. But what if it can be used to your group’s advantage?
In the mid 1980’s there was a well known West Coast billing service that told its clients that they had only follow three simple rules to obtain success: Do the cases. Turn in billing information. Go home. Then, they would be paid.
Fast forward to today. Far too many physician groups have a business model based on that same philosophy. As the writer Robertson Davies said, “The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.”
Today, it seems as if change is accelerating at a faster and faster pace: ACOs, government interference, fraud and abuse witch hunts, your services as someone else’s “right,” national groups poaching your opportunities, hospital-centric healthcare, and a “system” not a market – these are just some of the bats hitting you as you run the gauntlet of daily practice.
But change in the healthcare industry has always been a given. It’s how you and your fellow group members react to the change that makes the difference.
If the change is feared – the fear of the unknown – then indeed it is a major cause of stress. So,if your group does nothing but engage in business as usual, then you will undoubtedly be victim to the winds of this change and, eventually, will be shipwrecked.
On the other hand, if you view the winds of change are presenting new opportunity, the opportunity to engage in practice in a way that previously, for ethical reasons or image reasons or economic reasons, was viewed as inappropriate, then change changes from fear to fuel.
The French got it wrong: The more things change the more things change. Use change to your advantage, to your success, and to your profit.
