Is it worthwhile to hire a practice management consultant?

Abstract

This article discusses the decisions involved with hiring a consultant for the medical practice: when to hire one, how to locate the best one for a particular practice, finding a consultant and analyzing their skills in terms of the needs of the practice, and other essential advice to provide the medical practitioner with a basis for making a decision on consultants. The Achilles heel of doctors is the tendency to think they should be able to fix all problems on their own, thus often delay in seeking help for their practice that can alleviate existing problems or keep a practice on track with success. This often leads to excessively long work hours or compounding of problems, when a simple fix could be the solution when analyzed by an outside consultant. Approaches to determining the appropriateness of a particular consultant are presented, along with questions to ask when determining the expertise and the "fit" of a consultant.