Clinical Scorecard: The Importance of Hiring a Doctor at the Right Time, Part 3: Hiring Before vs After the Demand

At a Glance

Key Highlights

• Hiring proactively before reaching full capacity allows time to build patient volume through marketing and referrals while maintaining service quality.
• Adding one doctor day per week can increase exam capacity by 10-20% without additional rent or space costs.
• Each additional doctor day can generate 14-20 new exam slots weekly, potentially adding $5,000 to $8,000 per week in revenue.

Guideline-Based Recommendations

Diagnosis

• Identify signals of reaching capacity ceiling such as being fully booked or limited exam slots.

Management

• Consider hiring proactively before demand peaks to avoid the 'too busy to grow' trap.
• Start with incremental increases, such as adding one doctor day per week, rather than maxing capacity immediately.

Monitoring & Follow-up

• Track revenue per exam, cost of goods, and incremental staffing costs to calculate break-even patient volume.
• Monitor exam slot utilization and patient flow to optimize scheduling and capacity.

Risks

• Proactive hiring involves short-term expense and potential cash flow strain.
• Reactive hiring risks losing patient loyalty and growth opportunities due to capacity constraints.

Patient & Prescribing Data

Patients served in outpatient clinical practice with capacity constraints

Increasing provider availability proactively supports patient access and continuity of care.

Clinical Best Practices

• Use financial modeling to determine break-even patient volume before hiring additional providers.
• Leverage marketing, referral, and recall campaigns to build patient volume during capacity expansion.
• Incrementally increase provider days to manage risk and scale practice smoothly.

References

• Contact for article author Evan Kestenbaum