A Delicate Balance Managing Your Practice, Caring for Your Patients Urgent message: The challenge of running a successful business can be daunting for any entrepreneur. It’s especially tough when your first priority is maintaining excellence as a clinician. The right approach to financial issues can help your business run smoothly—and profitably— while allowing you to focus on caring for patients. Kevin J. Ralofsky, MBA, Founder of MedCapital and Treasurer of the Urgent Care Association of America A w w w. j u c m . c o m when the physician-owner must focus more on the practice of business man- agement in urgent care. This does not mean devoting less time to your primary mission; there are several ways that physician- owners can be directly involved in the business of urgent care without sacri- ficing patient care. A con- stant and gentle balance can be achieved by adopt- ing a few simple practices that will be explained in this article: Ⅲ Routinely reviewing flash reports (customized reports that allow you to see the financial health of your business in areas that interest you, packaged as a timely, redundant flow of information) Ⅲ Monitoring the payments at the time of service (PATOS) or copays Ⅲ Understanding and managing the roller coaster © GettyImages.com/Rob Colvin sk an urgent care physi- cian-owner what the biggest financial obsta- cle he or she faces is and the answer is likely to be “declining reimburse- ments.” But what if you found out there is an even bigger challenge to your financial survival—one that is simultaneously global and internal, and one that may be going unnoticed because it’s right under our collec- tive noses? The fact is that this chal- lenge is the very essence of running an urgent care practice: Physician-owners must look at urgent care not only as a clinical practice, but also as a business entity that has the possibility of real loss when neglected and well-deserved profits if managed consistently and carefully. Physicians need to focus on the practice of being an entrepreneur as well as a care provider. And the reality is that there are times JUCM T h e J o u r n a l o f U r g e n t C a r e M e d i c i n e | D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 6 29