Every now and then, I’ll ask a physician owner a question and get a look that says:
“Where did that come from?”
Something like: “If you add that third location, who approves overtime there?” Or: “What happens to your payer relationships if your lead physician leaves?”
It can feel like it came out of left field.
It didn’t. It came from scars.
When you’ve helped grow practices from one location to 20, to 62, and then past 100, you collect a lot of lessons the hard way. Things that seemed small until they weren’t.
Most physician owners haven’t been through that, and I don’t mean that as a criticism. Your experience is what you’ve lived. If you’ve built one great location, you know one location extremely well.
But it means the most important questions often aren’t on your radar yet. Not because you aren’t smart enough to ask them. Because you haven’t been in the situation that teaches you to.
You don’t know what you don’t know. None of us do.
That’s the real value of an experienced outside perspective. Not answers. Better questions, asked earlier, before they get expensive.
So let me turn it around:
What’s a question you wish someone had asked you before your last big decision?
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