Healthcare is one of the fastest growing businesses within the United States. According to the American Bar Association, by the year 2019, healthcare spending will reach $4.5 trillion; nearly 19% of the gross domestic product. If you are among this group wondering what you can do to grow your business, then franchising might be one of the best options out there.
Why Would We Franchise?
In October, 2013, the Affordable Care Act had its first open enrollment. During this period, people who did not have health care, or whose employers did not provide them healthcare, were able to shop health care exchanges to find more coverage at an affordable price. By April, more than 7 million people signed up. Many of whom are getting coverage for the first time, or the first time in quite a while. This alone leads to an obvious conclusion: there are going to be far more people visiting various healthcare institutions and there won’t be enough doctors/dentists/orthodontists/optometrists etc. to see everybody. Franchising is a fantastic option for creating more opportunities for healthcare professionals to see more patients.
How Does Franchising Help Me?
According to Entrepreneur magazine (http://bit.ly/Ub8SE5) there are generally three reasons a business franchises. They lack money, time, or people. With the large influx of new patients around the country, there is going to be a serious lack of both people and time. Having another location for your business will provide another time and place for more people to be seen.
However, franchises differ from chains because you are not the one responsible for running this new location. As a franchisor, you are selling the model of your proven business method to another person (the franchisee), allowing them to use the name of your business, your processes and best practices in exchange for a fee. They are the ones in charge of running their business, and they have a financial stake to motivate them. As the franchisor, you provide training materials and policies of your business, but the nitty gritty of every day operations, that is up to the franchisee.
(To learn more about starting a franchise and the benefits, register for the Franchising Health Care Conference in September – http://www.franchisinghealthcare.com/)
Healthcare franchises can also be attractive to the physicians working for you. In an interview with Entrepreneur magazine, Dr. Kay Holmes and Ellen Sullivan explain why their urgent care franchises have been so successful (Full interview here: http://bit.ly/1tNpO3E). They explain many different appeals, one of which is never worrying about being on call. At their urgent care locations, physicians work 12-hour shifts. They also explain physicians don’t have to worry about dealing with the headache of insurance companies or payroll. That part of the business is handled elsewhere, so all the physicians need to worry about is practicing medicine.
Franchising in healthcare is a match made in heaven. Taking the best practices of healthcare and streamlining them for use of multiple locations creates the ability to see more patients and allows physicians to focus on practicing medicine. When it comes down to it, franchising allows physicians to focus on what they are best at: medicine.
