Business of Medicine Skills for Physicians
With complicated payment formulas, evolving employment and practice options, and increasing care team dynamics at play, working in the medical field requires business knowledge and skills that often aren’t taught during medical training.
Whether you need to master these skills because you own or want to own a practice, or need to learn business fundamentals to be able to navigate day-to-day practice operations, you don’t quite have to go back to school for an MBA to get them!
Why physicians need business skills
Business skills can lay the groundwork for optimal care delivery, plus they can help you achieve the professional and personal goals you’ve set for yourself, whether that’s managing a care team, opening a direct primary care practice, or retiring.
Investing in yourself by building up business savvy can help you:
- Increase practice revenue
- Hire and manage a team
- Negotiate important deals for your medical practice
- Improve your employment contract
- Grow your business and brand
- Move into an administrative or director role
- Advocate with your employer for investment in primary care
- Take on a new leadership role
- Practice to the scope you want
- Work more efficiently
Not only that, you can take your knowledge a step further and use it to advocate alongside the AAFP for system-level change around topics like physician payment.
Earn CME While You Learn
Enhance efficiencies and outcomes by focusing your knowledge on the business of medicine.
"In the previous days, as a physician, you used to come to work, take care of your patients, and you went home. But with how things have evolved and changed, you need to have a greater understanding of what the reimbursement rate looks like for the patients that you are taking care of, what the overhead costs associated with running a practice are, as well as understanding a little bit more about all the players that affect how health care is delivered and gets reimbursed, so that when you are being a little bit more frustrated by certain things happening, you have the greater context and you can advocate and make a larger difference."—Tambetta Ojong, MD, family physician, North Carolina
Top business skills physicians need
Wondering where to start with developing your business skills? No matter what your practice setting or employment status is, these concepts can help you improve care and grow your career:
Skill #1. Coding and Billing Accurately
Knowing the business of coding and billing can improve revenue, help you understand how your salary is calculated, reduce administrative burden, and help you introduce and sustain innovations in your practice that allow for better care.
By keeping up with the latest developments in coding, you can be sure you don’t miss new rules that can make your life easier.
Coding knowledge can also be applied to help you get paid for specialized training. For example, osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) can be reimbursed but has specific documentation requirements.
Skill #2. Negotiating Deals and Contracts
You negotiate all the time, even when working with your patients to help them make important changes. By recognizing that you’re a negotiator, you can take steps to improve your ability to persuade others and achieve beneficial outcomes for you, your team, your family, and more.
Some of the most common negotiations physicians know they will encounter, such as negotiating an employment contract, are also some of the most difficult to prepare for if you haven’t learned the skills. Thoughtful negotiation can lead to major income and work-life balance gains over the long term, so it’s important to prepare.
Skill #3. Understanding Finances
Your financial education needs will vary depending on your practice ownership status or role. To understand your clinic’s financial statements, you’ll need a working knowledge of how revenue and expenses interact to create the ledger used to produce those statements.
Financial insights can also help you when you’ve received or are applying for grant money and you need to know how to work with a set program budget.
Skill #4. Population Health and Quality Improvement
In primary care, quality improvement, population health, and public health are common terms, but they aren’t always well understood. Having a handle on these concepts and their specific purposes can help you argue the business case for health equity in your practice and implement important changes to achieve community health goals.
Additionally, success in these areas requires knowledge of data systems and how they can help you measure the right outcomes, as well as change and project management tactics that can strengthen your improvement efforts.