Creating A Comprehensive Business Plan
Looking for the only business plan you’ll ever need? Practis has you covered with a comprehensive business plan that will help you attract patients, stay on top of your goals, and manage your cash flow. This essential document can also help you understand your strategy for sustainable growth and improve your odds of funding.
You can use the template below to create a business plan from scratch or rewrite your existing plan to prepare for the road ahead. Think of it as GPS for your business – an essential navigational tool to help you structure, run, and grow a practice you can be proud of.
Why You Need a Medical Business Plan
If you want to succeed, grow, and continually add value to your practice, a medical business plan is essential. No matter where you are in the process, a strategic plan will help you create an operating framework that crystallizes your focus and puts your goals front and center.
A medical business plan is important for many reasons, including:
- To define your mission, vision, goals, and target audience
- To help you set SMART marketing goals and achieve optimal results
- To help you estimate costs and make informed financial projections
- To shed light on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
The questions addressed in your business plan will guide your ship for years to come. What makes our practice unique? What value do we provide for the community? What are our patient personas? What are our annual growth percentage goals? Your business plan answers these and many other questions to create a solid foundation built on strategy and specificity.
Your Executive Summary
Your executive summary is essentially a broad overview of your practice. This overview includes your practice’s goals and specialties, a review of the practice so far, and details on how you would like your practice to grow in the future.
In this section, you will:
- Give a concise overview of your specific goals
- Make your specialties and services clear
- Emphasize your commitment to exceptional patient care
- Highlight key financial projections, service offerings, and unique aspects of the practice
Your Description, Mission, and Vision
Practice Description
The description section is where you summarize your medical practice in detail. Here, you have a chance to describe the services your practice will provide and discuss your target patients and personas. Your description should also include your location, history, mission, and vision.
Mission & Vision
Your mission statement could be something like, “To be the best urology clinic in Ourtown, providing empathetic, patient-centric care that utilizes the latest technological advancements to meet our patients’ needs.”
Whatever your mission and vision, these statements act as unifying declarations and goals your team can reference time and again. Plus, any time you set goals, you can refer back to your mission and vision to ensure they align.
The Market Analysis
Your Industry Landscape
Your industry landscape includes a detailed analysis of your industry, including the latest trends, regulatory changes, and relevant technological advancements. In this section, you will address how these factors impact patient care and service delivery.
Patient Demographics and Segmentation
This is the section where you explore patient preferences, needs, and expectations, showing that you understand (with great specificity) the type of patients your practice will attract and serve. Getting a clear picture of your patients will also help you craft your messaging and create engaging content moving forward.
Competitor Analysis
In this section of your medical business plan, you will assess competing local practices, highlighting their strengths, weaknesses, and service offerings. Along with this competitor information, you will identify opportunities for differentiation while emphasizing your competitive advantage.
This section might also include a look into your competitors’ marketing strategies. Keeping an eye on the competition is a tactic you will use time and again to gain valuable insight into how you can identify marketing gaps, enhance your strategies, and bring in more patients.
Your Marketing and Sales Strategy
In the marketing and sales section of your plan, you will describe how you plan to attract and retain patients. It’s best to be specific, outlining your marketing strategies, goals, and activities. This can include information on digital marketing efforts, referral networks, and local community outreach.
Specific medical marketing strategies include:
- Medical SEO
- Social media management
- Online review management
- A user-friendly, patient-centric website
While outlining your marketing strategy, it can be helpful to remember the “7 Ps” of marketing: product, people, price, promotion, positioning, packaging, and place. Attracting and keeping patients is the number one factor in the success of your practice, so having a robust marketing and sales strategy is essential. This section can also include information on patient retention, like your plan for scheduling, follow-ups, and satisfaction initiatives.
Your Operations Plan
The operations section is used to outline how exactly your medical practice will work. As you can imagine, determining these factors before getting your practice off the ground is critical. It’s also a great opportunity to assess which areas might be outsourced, such as recruitment and billing.
Here, you will include information like:
- Operational workflows, patient management systems, and administrative procedures
- How you will use technology for record-keeping and patient communication
- The organizational structure, roles, and responsibilities within the practice
- Staff training programs, recruitment strategies, and measures for staff retention
- Insurance billing procedures, accepted insurance providers, and coding systems used
- Your pricing structures for services offered to uninsured or self-paying patients
Your Financial Plan
Any solid business plan includes a financial strategy that explores how your practice will grow financially, including expected profitability. Ideally, you will include a cash flow forecast that breaks down your outflow and inflow monthly. If you are starting a new practice, this section will include your start-up costs. If your practice is established, this section will include items like cash flow statements and balance sheets.
Your Risk Analysis and Contingency Plan
Writing a risk analysis is no one’s idea of a good time, but it is a mandatory element for any successful business plan. This section will identify risks like unforeseen market shifts, malpractice issues, or regulatory changes.
What it lacks in fun, this section more than makes up for in empowerment. That’s because analyzing your risks allows you to develop a contingency plan to mitigate those risks and keep your practice growing year after year.
Your Implementation Schedule and Milestones
Lastly, you need a schedule to help keep you on track and accountable. Dates, milestones, and an ambitious but realistic timeline are all key to maintaining focus and momentum. Your timeline might include when you plan to implement items like patient care enhancements, tech upgrades, and key initiatives. Best of all, measuring progress and achievements is empowering and inspiring, helping propel your practice toward greater success.
Create a Winning Medical Business Plan in 2024
Whether you’re creating a brand new business plan or revising an old one, it can be a daunting task. As a physician who puts so much time and energy into caring for others, you may feel like there’s very little left over for creating such a detailed, strategic document.
The Practis team can help, particularly in the areas of mindset, medical marketing, and strategic goal-setting. Get empowered and inspired today with a free Practice Assessment with one of our dedicated practice growth experts. Need a refresh on your current marketing efforts? From medical listings management to SEO to PPC (pay-per-click) ads and more, we’ve got you covered.
Contact us to get started.
