Today we're diving into Medicare - should you contract with Medicare or not?
Pelvic PT Rising: The pelvic health tools to make you a better clinician and/or a more successful business owner. We want every single pelvic health practitioner to be more confident and successful in your practice and career!
Clinical Courses: Game-changing online courses to make you more confident, challenge your thinking and improve patient outcomes
Business Resources: Helping 500+ pelvic health practitioners confidently start, grow and build their dream business!
As always, it's going to depend on you. Your goals, your vision for your practice, your reason for starting. But here are a few pros and cons to help you along the way.
Many practices begin to take Medicare because they're afraid they can't fill their schedule. Or afraid they have a large retired population and won't be able to serve them. Or afraid of what physicians might say. A lot of 'fear' around this decision.
So ask yourself - "If I knew I was going to be successful....what would I do?" It often is as simple as that! Do you have heart for treating Medicare patients, or would you prefer to work with a different population?
In terms of pros - if you contract with Medicare you'll be able to fill your schedule. Your patient volume should be significantly higher, and you'll be more easily able to market to physicians in your area. These are relatively big pros to contracting with Medicare!
The list of cons - as you probably are already expecting - is going to be quite a bit longer. You lose control over what you charge and your profitability drops dramatically. It becomes difficult to ever hire someone, pay them a good wage and remain profitable. You'll spend far more time on documentation, have to use a more robust EMR and wait for weeks for reimbursement. You'll have to pay a percentage to a biller.
Ultimately, with Medicare you'll have high volume and low margins. Without, you might have low volume and higher margins. With Medicare you'll be seeing almost twice as many patients to make the same amount of money as you do with a cash-based practice.
So what do you envision doing in your practice? You can absolutely be successful (if you need help, let us know!) with whatever you want to do - so built towards your vision!ique to get clear on what you do (and don't) share with patients.
As Nicole said on the full 'sode of the topic...
"Ultimately, with Medicare you'll have high volume and low margins. Without, you might have low volume and higher margins. With Medicare you'll be seeing almost twice as many patients to make the same amount of money as you do with a cash-based practice." - Nicole Cozean
Learn more about pelvic health with our Clinical Courses
All of the Rising clinical courses are designed to:
Challenge the way you think
Make you more confident in your clinical practice.
Allow you to go-at-your-own pace (all online!)
Let you go back to your work: you'll have lifetime access to the lectures and handouts. Check out all the clinical courses we offer (www.pelvicptrising.com/clinical).
Curious about private practice? Check out our Business Resources
We've now helped more than 200 cash-based pelvic health practices start and grow.
We want to make sure you're building a business that works for you (instead of vice-versa) and actually enjoy the process along the way!
See all the business resources we offer (www.pelvicptrising.com/business), tailored specifically to pelvic health!
Nicole Cozean, PT, DPT, WCS
Founder of Pelvic PT Rising and PelvicSanity Physical Therapy in Southern California.
Dedicated to forever changing pelvic health with online clinical courses to help you be more confident in your practice and business resources to help start and grow pelvic health businesses.
Jesse Cozean, MBA
Co-founder of the Pelvic PT Rising and the Rising Podcast.
Jesse uses his business experience to help pelvic health business owners start and grow their practices so they can build a practice that truly works for them. From website design, SEO, conversions, marketing, finance and money mindset, he wants to make the process of owning your own practice easier and fun.