Surgeons need to focus on SCOPE

You've heard it before. You can't make it up in volume. No margin, no mission. You can do well by doing good. You can only have so many loss leaders.

Elective and even essential surgical services have dropped during COVID and so have incomes and salaries of surgeons.

The simple truth is that if you do not provide medical and surgical services in a way that generates profits, you won't be doing it for very long. One way to do that for surgery is to define your SCOPE: Surgical Care Offering a Profitable Experience. But, getting from said to done in the world of value based surgical care is tough and means you will have to:

1. Do a better job of cost accounting for a given episode of care
2. Price your product, particularly in this era of bundled payments, more precisely
3. Focus on where in the market you want to play and how you are going to win by offering services that generate a fair profit

Which states would you target in the map above?

1. Don't fall victim to the distraction of traction
2. Deliver on the value proposition you make to not just patients, but insurance companies and employer-payers as well
3. Be sure people in your organization understand the impact of their work on the profitability of your company or practice by providing them with appropriate financial statements and education on how to read them
4. Clarify how different processes of care impact the bottom line
5. Reconcile the ethics of medicine with the ethics of business. Practice compassionate capitalism.
6. AI, while useful, will only get you so far if all you are doing is automating bad data that results in GIGObytes of bad information
7. Align your engagement and conversion strategies and tactics to your SCOPE

Focus, focus, focus. You can only dominate on one value factor and differentiate with one other. Just be sure whatever you choose is profitable as part of a viable business model.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs