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How Doctors can structure “Group Practice"

It is a bit surprising that the group practice concept is a new phenomena among doctors. It was adopted long back by professionals like Architects, CAs, Lawyers, HR Consultants, and Branding Consultants to name a few.

As more and more good hospitals come up and hospital infrastructure in tire 2 and tire 3 towns rapidly improved, leading doctors found it difficult to retain and grow patient volumes. Moreover, keeping pace with medical advances and upgrade skill is not humanly possible for a single doctor and senior doctors would not like to compete with talented and promising junior doctors. The best winning formula in such a situation is “Group Practice” among doctors from same specialty / super specialty. This helps Star Doctors to maintain their supremacy and in avoiding unwanted competition. At the same time, skilled and qualified young doctors will get more work to sharpen their skills, stability and growth with time..

Some key point’s doctors must consider before coming together for “Group Practice” are

• They should have mutual respect.
• Each one should bring some specific skill / strength.
• Senior partners should give space to juniors and similarly juniors need to respect and recognize years of hard work and effort put in by seniors to establish a name and practice.
• One can start with small number – as small as two rather than being too bullish from the start.
• Plan for fair period – Settle with around 10 years and terms of association can be discussed in every 2 or 3 yrs.
• Financial sharing percentage is critical as It has to be fair otherwise the relationship will not last long. Initially share can be higher for senior doctors and as “total pie” increases with time, junior colleagues should take care of it.
• One can consider “Exit” barrier of approximately retaining a 20 % share of each in group to provide some stability.
• One can establish a private limited company / LLP or partnership firm. However, nothing works if mutual respect and understanding are lacking.

Dr Vikram Singh Raghuvanshihas managed leading hospitals in West, South and North India and has engaged over 2000 doctors in his career spreading over twenty five years.