Chiropractic News

Invest in your practice for the best ROI
By Derek Greenwood

What is the best investment? Where can you put your money and get the best return? Stocks? Bonds? Mutual funds?

What is safe — especially in uncertain economic times? And how can you ensure your own survival when the market is down?

The answer to these questions may be simpler than you think.

Before looking for an answer, however, it’s important to understand a commonly used term, return-on-investment (ROI).

ROI is a simple concept: If you invest $100 and that investment earns $10 over the next year, it would have a 10 percent annual ROI — assuming the original $100 is safe and still worth $100.

Because bank savings accounts have a small ROI, investors have turned to CDs (certificates of deposit), stocks, and bonds to improve their ROI. Generally, ROI increases with the amount of risk to which the investment is exposed: The higher the risk, the higher the potential ROI.

Contributing to the risk factor are the state of the economy and the general amount of confidence investors have in Wall Street.

WHAT TO DO?

Deciding how to invest your hard-earned money can be difficult. One of the first things a financial advisor would ask you to do would be to assess your risk-taking ability, and then decide on your goals.

If you want a safe investment free of corporate “slight of hand” economics and a good return, consider investing in a company whose leaders are trustworthy and work hard — your practice.

Spend your investment money to expand your own organization — to reduce overhead, increase the sales of your service, and increase your collections.

You would be surprised how many people invest in some corporation for a possible small return, yet won’t invest in themselves for a potentially large return.

You made your money in your clinic. Since your clinic has a good performance history, why not strengthen it?

You can invest in at least three ways:

• Buy new equipment or technology. You could buy equipment, such as tables, various machines, or even x-ray equipment.

Advantages: You get new equipment. Some of this equipment may allow you to offer ancillary services and generate additional income.

Disadvantages: Depending upon the equipment, you may not get additional return on your money. You may also have to add trained staff to administer the equipment.

• Invest in marketing and advertising. Identify and use resources, such as radio, pamphlets, newspaper, screenings, coupons, mailings, or even television.

Advantages: All of these media can work if you know what to say that will get patients.

Disadvantages: You need marketing expertise to get optimal ROI. And, you need to devote time to the marketing function. Your ROI will depend upon how expertly you do the advertising and marketing.

• Purchase practice-management software. Practice-management software has come a long way from simple billing and scheduling software.

Advantages: Today’s software has sophisticated centers for insurance follow-up, interoffice messaging, patient messaging, management statistics, full financial reporting, patient-appointment management, narratives, SOAP notes, inventory management, and patient accounting. Some software even has the ability to run multiple clinics from one software package.

A new software package can reduce the amount of time spent on processing patient paperwork, writing notes, writing narratives, generating reports and statistics, sending out rebills and tracers, following up on insurance companies, and posting payments. Properly designed software packages can also reduce input errors.

Disadvantages: Today’s full-service software is able to process hundreds of functions. None of the functions is difficult to master, but it takes time and training to master them.

You wouldn’t run a piece of industrial equipment without the proper training. You wouldn’t let someone treat patients without many years of training. Why would you expect the average office worker to learn a full practice-software program to perfection without training?

To ensure a quick return on your software investment, you must invest in proper training.

An investment strategy may incorporate all three aspects — new equipment or technology, marketing, and practice-management software. If you can only decide on one area, however, evaluate carefully which will give you the greatest ROI in the shortest time.

Derek Greenwood is the founder and CEO of EON Systems, Inc. (www.eonsystems.net), a manufacturer of practice-management and documentation software. He can be reached by e-mail at dgreen@eonsystems.net.