Are you the doctor running your hospital?
Can you imagine eating noodles alongside biriyani? If you think the example is a bad one, how about asking a Boxer to run a 100m race?Although both require fitness, each one of them is designed in doing something else and should stick to doing what they can do best. Isn’t the same thing true for doctors who also doubles up to be an entrepreneur? Oh ya, entrepreneurship is the fancy word for running a business.
Before we read further, try to answer to yourself, max 2 seconds to think per question
- What’s the difference between accounting and finance?
- What’s the difference between topline and bottom line
- What’s the unit cost of electricity for your hospital?
- Which of these is a TPA or an insurance company? MD India; Vidal Health; Mediassist
- Why is NABH important?
If you thought NABH was to enable insurance tie-ups and marketing, then you are wrong. I’m not going to give you the answer for the others.Ps refers yourself.However, if you knew the answers for all 5, or at least 4, you can stop reading further and continue managing your hospital. But if your knowledge is less than 4, then probably you should start thinking about quitting managing your hospital.
Just coz you spent money in building the hospital, or just coz you have a good patient load doesn’t necessarily make you a good administrator. Entrepreneurship is a quality coupled with good knowledge of running a business. By quality, I mean the ability to delegate & extract work from the employees in the most efficient manner, not just assigning responsibilities. The knowledge is multi-factorial. I don’t intend to mean one needs to have an MBA to be knowledgeable.
The above questions were just to tease your knowledge on some very basic administrative stuff.
Managing a hospital and owning a hospital are two different issues. Ownership doesn’t mean you can manage and you have to manage. It becomes even more relevant if you are the primary doctor of the hospital, where things get even messier, similar to the examples I began with.
Choose what’s right for you; you always have people who can do a better job at the other – it wouldn’t be spending, but investing !!!
Great article. I\’d love it!