If your goal is to have a part-time, high-profit practice, the Elite NP Model will help you every step of the way. While creating a practice can get costly, it is feasible to create a business with a little bit of cash and a few strategic decisions. In this guide, we’ll break down step by step how to start a low overhead business that creates big returns on your initial investment.

How to keep expenses low and revenue high

The main goal with any type of business is to make money. Helping people as a medical provider should always be a main priority, but it’s impossible to care for others if you don’t have enough cash to keep your clinic’s lights on. So, for a practice to be successful and ultimately profitable, you must learn how to keep expenses low and revenue high. While this may seem like a daunting task at first, an astute medical professional can get it done.

Staffing strategies

Many nurse practitioners who follow the Elite NP Model run their business completely independently. If a medical business owner were to hire a receptionist or assistant, their monthly net income would be drastically lowered. An employer is responsible for paying their employees’ salary, taxes, workers compensation, benefits, and other expenses. Managing staff can also mean running into problems in the workplace—it’s possible your employees may be unreliable or won’t perform up to your standards. Because of this, Elite NP recommends hiring as little as possible when establishing and scaling your practice.

You can operate solo by becoming an expert in your practice area, streamlining your operations, taking care of charting in a timely fashion, and only accepting cash. When you establish optimal time management and logistics, a business will run smoothly and you will only be managing yourself. This will save money and reduce busy work that would otherwise be outsourced to an employee or third party healthcare management company.

Running a low overhead cash practice

The Elite NP Model recommends running a cash-only practice. Insurance is often associated with complex paperwork, regulations, and payment delays. Many insurance-accepting practices hire dedicated staff to manage insurance payouts, and the clinicians staffed by these businesses are often bogged down by excessive charting required by most carriers. The Elite NP Model boils down to a key tenet: reducing stress! Insurance is an easily avoidable stressor that can hinder your success as a medical entrepreneur.

Deciding on an in-demand specialty

Now that you’ve decided to run a solo cash practice, it’s time to determine what type of services you’d like to provide. This will require both creativity and thorough market research. Be sure that these services fit into your skill set, are simple to perform, and appeal to the populations you serve. For example, there may be demand for an urgent care clinic in your area, but a clinician staffing this type of practice may be under high stress and work long hours. Conversely, an aesthetic injectable business may be easy to run, but these services may not be popular in your region.

Here are some niches that hit the sweet spot between simplicity and popularity:

• Men’s health and hormone replacement
• Telemedicine, including psychiatric and mental health services
• Medical weight loss
• Fertility services
• Medical cannabis evaluation and distribution (depending on legality in your area)

To learn more about these buzzy services, consider taking one of Elite NP’s comprehensive digital courses! Each awards CE hours and can be used for insurance reimbursement.

Keeping your bottom line low

A company’s bottom line is its net income or net profits after subtracting all costs from its total revenue. To keep a low overhead, your monthly expenses must be as affordable as possible. Some essential operating costs include medical supplies, rent, utilities, insurance premiums, and marketing materials. There are many shortcuts for keeping business operating expenses down. The first step is to determine your absolute necessities. Some non-negotiables are:

• Telephone and tech hardware: Your business must have at least one phone line for patients to contact you on. You can add a second line to your existing cell phone plan, or you can buy a cheap monthly landline and wifi bundle from a cable provider. Shop around for the most cost effective option before signing up for any contract. Be sure to also have a functioning computer with router.
• Website and social media: You must market your services through digital channels. The best way to do this is to build a professional, aesthetically pleasing website and use SEO tools for search engine visibility. If you are particularly ‘tech challenged’ it may be worth it to utilize a web developer on a one-time basis to build your site and social media accounts.
• Malpractice insurance: Malpractice insurance is an absolute must for any medical provider. A quality plan can help you avoid huge legal costs in the event of a suit. Going in on a comprehensive plan is worth it, but be sure to compare premiums, deductibles, and contract terms from a variety of carriers before signing on.
• Marketing: You need to have a modest monthly marketing budget for any type of practice. A business is nothing unless there is visibility from potential clients. Tech is generally the top way to find patients, but it may be worth it to utilize different mediums, including print advertising.

Mitigating risk

The money you put into this business needs to be an amount that you are okay with losing. If this is going to put a large financial strain on you, then keep saving until you have capital that can be strategically spent. Avoid business loans. The Elite NP Model stresses being debt free, always.