Professor Candid’s belt-tightening tips for medical practitioners.
With the cost of living going up, Professor Candid offers some finance-boosting tips for general practice.
1. Review your expenses and consumables
Do you really need that assorted collection of chocolate biscuits and those expensive coffee capsules? I thought not. At the end of the day it’s a staff room, not a five-star hotel. Besides, what’s wrong with bread and water? While you’re at it, get the step ladders out and unscrew a few light bulbs!
2. Car share
You probably don’t really like the people you work with so why not reduce your travel costs by spending an extra hour a day stuck inside a socially awkward tin box listening to your colleague wittering on about the weather and the price of pertrol?
3. Add more services
If you have an unused room at your practice why not rent it out to an allied health care professional, or better still convert it into a modern operating theatre? I mean how hard can it be to perform a total hip replacement? If you can put together a bookcase from Ikea you can almost certainly replace someone’s hip.
5. Innovate
At our practice we introduced “drive-through medicine”, which allows patients to order their statins at one window and collect from the next. We also invented blow-dart immunisations, which is self-explanatory, and the double-ended speculum, for taking two HPV swabs at the same time!
6. Improve accessibility
Get an icecream van, paint the words “Oxy’s and Benzo’s” up the side (apostrophes a must for that friendly local grocer vibe) and drive it through your nearest social housing estate. Once word gets round that this is no ordinary icecream van, the jingle will make them flock to you in droves. It’ll be a bit like Ben and Jerry’s meets Day of the Dead.
5. Maximise your billings
Make sure you bill for all the services you provide. Bear in mind you’ll probably be pinged by the PSR.
6. Resign
This sounds extreme but remember your skills are easily transferable. For example, you could work in a fast-food outlet or drive an icecream van or even write out your own Centrelink certificates.
7. Abandon universal bulk billing
If the patient doesn’t like it then tell them to complain to the federal government about their rebates. Hang on, maybe I should have thought of that one first!
Hopefully these tips will help you continue to run a successful, efficient and financially stable general practice.
