Practice tip of the week: Working through physician partnership issues

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Your weekly dose of wisdom from the Physicians Practice experts.

With all the useful information available on Physicians Practice, it is easy to become overwhelmed.

With this in mind, the tip of the week is a chance to reflect on some of the wisdom found all across the site. In a January 2021 story on Working through physician partnership issues, Nick Hernandez, MBA, FACHE writes the following:

“When physician partners are disputing, their quarrels tend to disrupt the daily operations of their practice. If they are not careful about keeping their disputes between themselves, it can result in the failure of their medical practice. some of the most common problems medical practice partnerships face and ideas for how to deal with them.

  1. Unfair workload – In order for the relationship to be successful, all of the physician owners must agree on the same strategic direction for the practice. If one partner wants to build a well-known physician practice and the other partner only cares about earning a decent living, the practice is destined to fail. Set a clear, agreed-upon course for the practice that meets the needs of all physician owners.
  2. Unmet expectations - Three months is a reasonable timeframe to see if the plan is achieving the results you want. Schedule an actual time where you will sit down together to see what has been accomplished toward the goals you set. If you see progress, you may want to give it another three months. If your evaluation tells you there is no hope, it may be time to make that very difficult decision to end the relationship.
  3. Losing interest - I cannot stress enough the importance of scheduling partner meetings regularly. When issues have arisen, you may also need to schedule a separate meeting to address them head on. Give your partner plenty of lead time and full disclosure about what the meeting is about. Let them get prepared for the meeting, but don't let it be put off because someone "doesn't have time"

Click here to read the rest of the article and be sure to check back next week for another Tip of the Week!