So you’re thinking about starting your own outpatient medical practice.
You probably have many good reasons to open a private practice. Private practices can be lucrative, although it requires you to spend time building relationships with patients while also attending to all business processes that are part of running your practice .
Maybe you want more autonomy over your practice and your workflow. Or maybe you hope to expand your services to underserved areas or specific populations based on your expertise.
If you’re thinking about starting an outpatient medical practice, one of the first things you should do is write a business plan. Even if you’re able to self-fund your practice and don’t need outside investment, your business plan is a great tool for thinking through all the different aspects of building a profitable and sustainable practice.
You should go into this thinking about your business plan as a living document, not something you do once and then file away forever. Use it as a tool, especially around your financials. Revisit and update it regularly by comparing your forecasts to your actuals and adjusting as necessary.
To help you get started, you can download our free business plan template . If you’ve never written a business plan before, Bplans also offers a library of sample medical business plans that you can review or even download to use as a model.
The first section that will appear in your business plan is the executive summary . But before you dive right in, it’s the section of your plan that you should actually write last. It’s a summary and an overview of your outpatient medical practice and your plans, so it will be easy to put together after you’ve written the rest of your plan.
Executive summaries are short—keep it to one to two pages. Keep in mind that if you’re using your plan to get funding, investors and banks tend to read your executive summary to get a sense of whether to read on and consider your request. Do not neglect it; just write it last.
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Now that you’re familiar with what’s included in your executive summary, tuck that information away, and get to work on the rest of your plan.
Think of the next few sections of your plan as the overarching description of your practice’s business opportunity. You’ll cover the problem you’ve identified and the solution that your practice offers. Then you’ll think through your ideal customer , your competition , and your opportunities for growth . This section area should describe the services you provide and how they benefit your patients.
First, describe the problem that you’ve identified and how your practice solves that problem. Here’s a brief example:
The problem : There is a lack of affordable pediatric and gynecological care available in coastal areas of Lane County, Oregon. Many patients have to travel miles to the closest practice.
The solution : Dr. Gardner plans to open Ocean Lane Outpatient Care to serve smaller Oregon coastal communities scattered outside of major towns with major hospitals. Due to her focus on pediatric and gynecological care, Dr. Gardner’s particular services are especially valuable in this location due to the lack of available service providers in the area. Dr. Gardner’s practice will accept private insurance and Medicaid, as well as a sliding scale for patients in a certain income bracket.
The services section identifies what kind of medical practice you are opening. Restate who your practice serves and what kind of services you specialize in. Talk about how your practice approaches treatment and what goals you have in addition to providing quality care. Here’s an example from a sample business plan for a medical practice.
Include a breakdown of all services furnished by the clinic, being as granular as possible. For example:
Next, talk about your ideal patients. If you’re in the earliest stages, you’ll want to do some research that verifies your hypotheses.
For example, Dr. Gardner would have needed to verify her assumption that people in coastal towns in Oregon are in need of pediatric and gynecological services—a need that isn’t currently satisfied by available resources.
A formal market analysis can help verify that there’s a need for your particular practice in your intended location.
Your ideal patient profile identifies the type of patient whom you hope to attract and retain. To clarify, this does not mean you only serve your ideal patient type. Rather, focusing your outreach efforts on attracting your ideal patient will allow you to grow your practice more effectively than targeting a large number of patients who may or may not be in the market for your practice’s specialty.
For instance, because Dr. Gardner specializes in preventive and curative care, a patient seeking palliative treatment for terminal cancer is not the ideal patient. This patient would not receive the best care for their needs from Dr. Gardner’s services.
Acquiring a new patient is six to seven times more expensive than retaining a current patient. In order to support and retain current patients, develop a strategy to proactively meet their needs and set benchmarks to measure the success of your strategy.
First, your business plan laid out the opportunity at hand. Now, the rest of your plan will focus on how to take advantage of that opportunity. Now is the time to lay out what you’ll do to attract patients and set up a viable business model with healthy financials.
The marketing and sales component of your plan should include how you plan to reach the patients in your target market, how you’ll bill for your services, and what you need to do to bring in the right number and type of patients.
“For [target market description] who [target market need], [how our business offering meets the need]. Unlike [key competition], it [most distinguishing feature].”
For [coastal community members] who [require gynecological care], Ocean Lane Outpatient Care [provides both pediatric and women’s health services]. Unlike [other area medical practices], Ocean Lane Outpatient Care is [conveniently located near the communities it serves and can fill the gap between pure pediatric care and full-blown adult care for young women].
Make sure you price your services at what they are worth and explain your pricing to your patients. Consider the demographics your practice serves when you choose your pricing. Research other practices in the area and learn more about how you can choose the best prices for your patients and your practice.Also, consider how you will get patients to keep coming back to your practice. Sometimes you can increase sales by upselling and cross-selling , or offering complementary services.
If you accept insurance, the contracts you set up with insurance companies for reimbursement will probably dictate your pricing, so this is a good place to talk about your negotiation strategy as well.
The operations section of your business plan covers how your business works, from the logistics to the technology.
In this part of your plan, you set measurable, achievable milestones, such as the number of new patients added per month in the first year of operations. Milestones can be about any aspect of your medical practice as long as they emphasize growth. For metrics , decide which numbers to check regularly to track your company’s health. This area should also include information about traction (past successes) and risks:
Your team can be more important than your product or service. Describe your team here, even if it is just you and a receptionist who answers the phone in your office building.
The company overview tells about who you and your staff are and appeals to potential investors. Keep it short—it should be the shortest chapter of your business plan but is still very important.
Having a solid financial plan is critical, whether you’re seeking funding or not. A typical financial plan includes projections by month for the first year and annual projection for the next three to five.
When writing your financial plan, make sure to consider startup costs . For a medical practice, average startup costs can include initial fees, malpractice insurance, cost of renting or leasing office space, and the cost of any legal or tax advisors.
Consider submitting your plan to at least five to 10 banks if you need help financing your startup costs. Many banks have divisions designated to providing loans to new dental and medical practices , so submit your plan to that division if you can. Startup costs can be high in the medical field, so make sure not to underestimate them.
Finally, your appendix is the holder for any supporting information such as charts, images, graphs, and more. If you need to include large sets of data or pages of information, put it here. That way, it is available but does not distract from the plan’s most important pieces.
For instance, you can expand on your personnel plan with charts of each employee’s annual insurance costs. You can also include versions of your profit and loss statements and other financials that extend further into the future.
Don’t forget to go back to your executive summary! Remember to keep it brief and write it based on what you have written already.
When you’re ready to write your business plan, there are an array of resources available to you. Download our free business startup checklist to think about the next steps. Also, check out our free business plan template . Reviewing sample business plans in the medical field can help you get a better sense of the process and information you’ll provide. Downloading this plan for a family medicine clinic will probably be most helpful if you’re setting up a primary care practice.
Remember that this plan is a living document. Schedule a regular business plan review meeting. You should review your trajectory and compare your financial projections to your actuals frequently to keep your practice on track.
