The Executive Suite: 6 Ways physician funding can help grow your medical practice

If you are looking to grow your medical practice, alternative small business funding may be the fastest and easiest way to get the working capital you need. Alternative medical practice funding is available to all medical specialties, including general or family physicians and specialists like dermatologists, pediatricians, psychiatrists, chiropractors, optometrists, and more.

Many medical practice loans are best suited for newly licensed doctors who are ready to start their own practice or doctors who are ready to expand their existing practices by purchasing real estate. There are many different types of long- and short-term physician business loans available, such as SBA medical practice loans and bank loans, as well as faster alternative funding options like merchant cash advances, invoice factoring, and lines of credit. These different types of funding can be used for a variety of applications, including:

Buying equipment and technology
Purchasing real estate
Acquiring a practice

Hiring staff
Boosting your marketing
Improving patient services

1. Buying equipment and Technology

Growing your business sometimes means investing in updated or new equipment and technology. Medical practices in particular can benefit from up-to-date technology and equipment that provides better imaging and diagnostic information, helps digitize patient records and streamlines operations to make things easier for admin staff, or even enables you to offer entirely new services.

Since medical equipment and technology can be prohibitively expensive to purchase up front, alternative medical practice funding can help you secure the newest tech now and expand your service offerings more quickly, without having to save up for months (or years).

2. Purchasing real estate

Purchasing an office space or expanding to another location can feel particularly daunting since it typically involves a large sum of money up front, but it is important to think of it as an investment and remember that owning your space is one of the fastest ways to lower your monthly expenses and build your assets. Owning your office also makes it easier to make your medical practice to look the way you want—it’s much simpler to renovate and update your space to create a comfortable environment for your staff and patients when you own the building.

3. Acquiring a practice

Acquiring an existing practice, either by purchasing a practice from a retiring physician or buying out and merging with an established practice, is a great way to start or expand your own practice. It’s the fastest way to serve new territories, offer new services, and acquire new patients without making significant and time-consuming investments in marketing.

If you’ve planned to make this investment well in advance, SBA or bank loans will offer the best terms, but if this is an unexpected, time-sensitive opportunity, alternative financing will allow you to move more quickly.

4. Hiring More Staff

Growing your medical practice often requires hiring more doctors, nurses, and support staff so you can take on more patients without compromising quality of care. Finding talented clinical staff can be a challenging process for smaller practices who may not yet have the budget to compete with the pay and benefits of larger organizations. Medical practice funding can help you cover the costs of hiring new staff until your practice starts making more money from the increased patient load.

5. Boosting your marketing

Marketing is a great way to create awareness about your practice and recruit new patients, especially for new and growing practices, but it can be expensive. Medical practice funding can provide you with the working capital you need to advertise your practice, create or update your website, or use direct marketing to reach new patients.

6. Improving patient services

Keep your practice competitive by using medical practice loans to upgrade your patient services and offer desirable features such as online booking, online paperwork, live wait times, quick responses to inquiries, free wifi in your waiting room, or extended hours.
Conclusion

Medical practice funding is an important tool for growing any medical practice. There are many versatile funding options that can be used in myriad ways to bring more patients to your office. Use medical practice loans to grow your practice by: