How To Cultivate A Money Mindset in
Your Private Practice
Hey there, provider pro - do you truly know the importance of developing a healthy money mindset, not only in your personal life but within your private practice as well?
What about how to accurately and meaningfully decide what to charge for your services?
Good news!
We have those exact answers for you in this week’s episode of The Provider’s Edge.
Developing a money mindset is crucial to the success of not only your personal finances but the growth of your private practice.
How you handle your business’s money can literally make or break it.
The core of the money coming from your practice is what you charge patients for your services.
Payments from patients and insurance are the backbone of your income and the financial catalyst that drives your practice forward.
That is why knowing HOW to charge meaningfully and accurately is just as important as what you charge.
There are key do’s and don’ts when it comes to choosing what to charge.
Join us as we dive into these two key matters in this week’s episode of The Provider’s Edge podcast, where host Sabrina Runbeck interviews Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, author, speaker, and financial therapist at her own practice called Mind Money Balance.
Listen anywhere you get your podcastin' on.
Live Interview
Show Summary
Money, and how you handle it, is at the core of having your own private practice and how it functions. Your financial decisions within your practice can truly make or break it.
Financial literacy has never been more important, as only 43% of adults in the U.S. are financially literate. What exactly does it mean to be financially literate? It’s not as simple as just knowing about investing and taxes.
Being financially literate means you have learned sound money principles and have applied them to your life. Are you currently making smart money decisions in your private practice, particularly when it comes to the price you charge for your services?
It’s never too late to turn your financial habits around. Below are specific do’s and don’ts when it comes to deciding what to charge patients.
Don’ts: Mistakes To Avoid
1. Charging the same as other physicians in the local area
This creates a downward cycle of a lot of area physicians pricing their services based upon incorrect factors. If each one bases the price for their services on each other, what important variables actually justify that pricing? Yes, it’s important to stay competitive to an extent, but pricing your services accurately is ultimately a decision that YOU will have to make, not one that should be made based on what others are doing. Basically, if every type of physician with the same specialty charges the same amount, then nobody’s price is based on fact or their own personal factors that are far more important.
2. Charging based on what insurance companies reimburse
A lot of physicians use this reimbursement price from insurance companies as a benchmark to base their charge price. However, we all know that those reimbursement rates can widely vary depending on where you are and the insurance provider you’re on a panel with. If you're trying to leave insurance panels, but you're using their prices as a benchmark, you're probably actually underpricing yourself.
3. Thinking, “I can always raise my prices later, once I have a full patient list.”
This can sound good in theory but creates a whole host of issues when put into practice. It can spur something I like to call, “moving the goalpost.” When the time comes that your practice is full, you may be hesitant to raise prices and set another “goal” of possibly adding a clinician, and THEN you’ll raise your prices. Charging what you are worth from the get-go is not a bad thing. It is essential to your practice’s growth and makes people take you personally.
Do’s: Ideas to Implement
1. Reflect on the Value of the Service You Provide
Lots of people, even professionals like you, have imposter syndrome and think that what they have to offer may not be that valuable to others. You and what you have to offer your patients and colleagues are valuable. I used to ask myself, “What amount is a reflection of my self-worth?” I realize now that is the wrong question to ask. The right one to ask is, “What amount is reflective of the value that I provide?” Sometimes, we struggle with our self-worth—if we frame it as putting an amount on the value I provide the student (knowledge, time, kindness, etc.), then we are more apt to charge accordingly.
2. Consider the Cost of Doing Business
This goes for any business but needs to be taken into consideration with your own private practice, too. This may be an obvious business practice to determine what to charge for your services or products, but physicians, in particular, tend to underestimate the true cost of doing business. They mostly guess how much bills and wages are instead of actually sitting down for a few months in a row to see how much it is actually costing. The latter is crucial to gaining a clear picture of where your business currently sits financially, and where it can go next...
3. What Amount You Are Taking Home
Yes, it’s important to keep your business striving and thriving, but you deserve a comfy take-home pay too. In order to reach an ideal number, you need to assess what your needs and wants are—yes, you deserve your wants, too. Your business deserves to grow, and your personal financial prosperity deserves to grow right along with it. At the end of the day, it is YOUR practice, so you get to decide what amount you take home.
4. Flexibility in Raising Your Prices
This coincides with the last ‘Don’t’ up above. We tend to think that service prices are set in stone. But, if your private practice needs new software or requires a new employee, do you have the cash flow to do that with your prices staying the same? As long as a price change clause is in your onboarding paperwork, you are free to change your prices as you see fit to suit your growing needs.
Payments from patients are what drive your practice and income forward. Charging accurately and accordingly is crucial to your practice’s success. Avoid choosing your service prices based on what others in the area are charging and what insurance reimburses, and undercharging right away. Focus on reflecting on the value of the service you provide, consider the cost of doing business, what income amount you would like, and be flexible in raising your prices in order to best create ideal service charges.
The dos and don’ts of deciding what to charge are a big part of a healthy money mindset when it comes to not only your practice but your personal life. We practice self-care (or try our best to), physical care, and mental health care…what about financial self-care? They say money can’t bring happiness, but it does bring security, and stability and allows you to afford not only your needs but also your wants and then some. Having your own private practice means that, yes, money is harder to make, because you directly have to work for it, but it also means that the sky is your limit when it comes to your income and growing your practice.
Developing and growing a sound money mindset starts by reflecting on your current beliefs about money and what they are rooted in. Until you are aware of your current beliefs about money, your financial mindset can’t grow. The next part is research—Mind/Money Balance is a GREAT resource for accurate and good money advice and content. I encourage you today to start developing your money mindset and grow it into something big and beautiful.
This article is a summary of my conversation with Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, a financial therapist at her own practice Mind Money Balance, on the Provider's Edge Podcast.
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Interested in sharing your expertise and experience in your private practice with thousands of others? Apply here to be on my podcast! SabrinaRunbeck.com/Guests
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