Many Nurse Practitioners are frustrated in their day to day work.  They feel rushed to see lots of patients.  Of course, that goes against our nature – we want to take the time to really hear our patients, to communicate with them and to really address issues that are affecting their health. Sometimes there is no way around those longer visits.

And this is where the frustration comes in. It’s hard to see patients in 10 or even 15 minutes. I understand this. Our patients are often complicated and it’s nearly impossible to do an excellent job in just a few minutes.

However, there is a disconnect and we need to address it. I’ve heard too many times that physician practice owners “only care about money and generating revenue”. “They don’t care about the patient”. Gee…I’ve heard that same thing said about NP owned businesses and practices from my colleagues – we only care about the money.

Let’s set this record straight. What all of us need to understand is that healthcare is a business. You cannot maintain an office, hire staff and provide services without thinking about the money you are generating and spending. Health care is not free. The owner of the practice has overhead that has to be paid. Landlords don’t care if Medicare cuts reimbursements or if they decide to delay payment. For that matter, most employees don’t care either – they want their employer to pay fairly (with benefits) and on time.

The practice/business owner (NP, PA or MD/DO) is not the enemy here. If we must have someone to blame, then we only need to look to our current health care system that is full of regulations that are inefficient and make little sense, and third party payers who decide if and when they will pay, the amount they will pay, and if they will let us keep the money.

Nurse Practitioners, indeed all health care providers, need to understand, as a revenue generating practitioner…we too are a “business”!  It doesn’t matter if you work for your own business or someone else. The more we understand how this works, the better for all involved.

So the next time you or one of your colleagues says the NP or the MD/DO only cares about money the business can make, think again. Think about how you can support and contribute to the health of that practice, so it becomes a win-win-win situation. The patient gets services, the practice continues to provide services and the staff gets to keep their jobs. Oh, and a bonus win…the practice continues to contribute (physically and fiscally) to the local community. That makes it WIN x 4.

Stay tuned as this is a business topic that needs a lot more conversation.

Every clinician, indeed every person (well almost), wishes to make a difference in the lives of others. As a Nurse  and later as a Nurse Practitioner, I’ve always wanted to make a difference in the lives of my patients and their families. In the past 6 years or so, I’ve expanded my goal to include making a difference in the lives of fellow clinicians.

I feel blessed to do the work that I do. And to be honored for it…well, it’s a fantastic feeling.  In my mind, this is recognition for all of us that are business owners or aspiring business owners.

For those of you who are interested and cannot read the small jpeg, this is what it says:

Congratulations on receiving the 2012 AANP Nurse Practitioner Advocate State Award for Excellence! This prestigious award is given annually to a dedicated nurse practitioner advocate in each state who has made a significant contribution to the status of health care delivery and the practice of NPs.

Ever wonder who are Nurse Practitioners, what we do and where to find us? Here’s a small samples of NPs and our practices from around the country. Feel free to share the video with your friends, your colleagues, your patients, your networks. Post it on your websites and your blogs. Spread the word about Nurse Practitioners.

NPBO Video Minute – Facebook Pages

Welcome everyone to another NPBO Video Minute.  This is Barbara Phillips and today my question come from Grace in Seattle.  She’s wanting to know, “How do I make a Facebook page?”

So, I thought I would give you all a demonstration on how I did my Facebook page.  What you see here in from of you is my particular Facebook page and that’s at www.facebook.com/nursepractitionerbusiness.

But on anybody’s page you can scroll down, and you will see a link at the very bottom on the left hand column on “to create a page for my business.”  You want to go ahead and click on that link.  It’s going to take you to another page where it says, “Create a page.”  This is where you do that.

Now one of the things that’s important when you’re creating a page, and you’ll see that down here, you need to verify that you are the person, business, the product, the owner that has the permission and the authorization to actually build a page in that business’s name.  So, that’s pretty important.  Now, I’m going to assume this is for your practice or to bring traffic to your website.  Both of those things are very good things for all of you to do.  So, you actually want a local business.  You’ll click on that and then there’s a lot of different categories that you can choose from, and of course you’re probably going to want medical services.

Go ahead and create a name that is specific to your practice or your business.  I’m not going to do that here because once that name is used; it’s taken out of circulation.  So, I don’t really want to do that to anybody and not have their name available to them.  So, that’s what you’ll want to do.

Now when you get to the other side you can do things like putting in you office hours, you will be able to use apps to maybe make a map.  You can certainly refer people to your practice website.

And actually if we go ahead and go back here I don’t have that information here because I’m not showing my practice here, but if you look at the info tab on anybody’s page you’ll see website.  You’ll see some information about all of that that you can offer so be sure and do that.  Invite your patient’s or other people also to look at your page although you don’t have to.

The nice thing about having a Facebook page is they are indexed very frequently and will help with the search engines as far as getting traffic to your own practice and website.  If you should need some help in doing this there are some help files at the very, very bottom of any page.  You’ll see where it says, “Help.”  And what those help files look like … I searched for how to create a page, and then I came up with all of this information:  Who can create a page?  How you can create a page?  And what is a Facebook page?  Those sorts of things.  You’ll be able to get a lot of help there.

Also, on YouTube there are some good videos actually on how to do this process.  So, if you have any other questions or comments on this particular video go ahead and leave them at our blog at www.npbusiness.org.  Also, feel free to leave me a comment or question about what you would like to see in NPBO Video Minutes if you have any questions for us.

So, that’s it for this issue of NPBO Video Minutes, and I’ll see you next time.  Bye, bye now.

Today my question comes from Tina in Atlanta, Georgia.  She is asking, “What are the requirements for nurse practitioners starting their own business in Georgia and in other states.  And so, I’m going to answer this more on global level — a national level because we have different practice acts from state to state, as we’re all aware.

So, the first thing that you need to do is go to your Board of Nursing, read your practice act, and see what it is that you are allowed to do.

The second thing that you want to do is go to the Secretary of State for your state, and see what kinds of rules and regulations there are about businesses in your state, and find out what kind of licenses you need, and if there’s any restrictions.  Those restrictions will vary from state to state.  I’m in Washington State, it’s a pretty independent state, and we don’t have problems starting businesses.  But a nurse practitioner in California may find out that they cannot own their own practice, but it would have to be owned 51% by a physician and they can only own 49%.  You’ve got to know your own rules and regulations for your state.

So, hopefully, that gives you an idea of where to get started, again, Board of Nursing and then your Secretary of State.

If you have a question for us that you would like us to address on an NPBO Video Minutes, please go ahead and let us know on our blog at www.npbusiness.org.  And you can also comment on this video at that site as well.

So, I look forward to talking to you next time for another NPBO Video Minute.

According to the Pearson Report, there are now almost 158,000 Nurse Practitioners in the United States, however, the actual number of NPs in their own business is unknown. The purpose of this project is to discover how many NPs own their own business and practices as well as how many are considering joining their ranks.

Within the next few years, nearly 32 million Americans will gain health insurance. It’s a well known fact that there is a health care provider shortage. Nurse Practitioners are, and will continue to help fill that gap. As of right now, no one knows how many of us are in our own practices and how many NPs want to start their own practices to help meet the needs of the American public.

You are invited to take part in this survey. It phase 1 will take no more than 5-7 minutes to complete. You will find the survey @ www.NPBusinessSurvey.com.

Today I’ve got a question from Nurse Practitioner Dwayne.  Dwayne asks the best strategies for marketing a specific type of healthcare model to other practitioners and providers. Dwayne has a diabetes clinic.

Here are a few ideas for you and other NPs that you can do right now.  First thing I would suggest that you do is figure out who exactly are the people that you are serving.  You say diabetics.  Is that Type I, type 2, is it adult, is it children, is it adolescents or is it all of the above?  So, once you have that really narrowed down you’ll also know where these people hang out because you’ll want to get your name in front of them.  So, that will be a good thing to do.

Next thing that you’ll want to is go ahead and let the Emergency Rooms know and the Discharge Planners because often times these people show up in the hospital, and they do not have a provider, and they’ll be able to send them your way.

Then I want you to target the primary-care providers.  I would love it if you were in my area and you were taking diabetic patients because right now those that do have a specialty in diabetes—they are not taking new patients because they are all overloaded.

The next thing you want to do is call those offices.  Call the other endocrinology offices and diabetologists and say hey, you’re opening up and that you have openings and you can see patients because most of them are overbooked and they’d be glad to refer people to you so that you can see those patients.

And then the last thing I would do is make sure that you get online.  You want to go to local.google.com and enter in your practice information because what happens is somebody maybe in San Francisco looking up a diabetic specialist in the San Francisco and your name will pop up in Google, and more patients are doing that.  Be sure and do that.  That’s for everybody in any kind of a practice situation.

So, until next time for the next NPBO Minute, you can visit www.NursePractionerBusinessOwner.com or you can visit www.NPBusiness.org and leave a comment in our blog.

Answering Nurse Practitioner questions about business…

Teresa has asked me what do I think about having a niched practice such as with men’s health, since women have GYNs; and I’ll tell you, I think it’s a great idea.

First of all it does a couple of different things.  It allows you to practice in an area that you have passion for, and I think that is so important.  I mean, let’s face it.  We all work really hard, and we’re working harder every day.  So, why not practice in an area that brings you a lot of pleasure, it brings you a lot of joy, and it allows you to use your expertise in that particular area.

So, one of the things that I would recommend if you are just getting started in your practice is go ahead and have a general practice, build it up, just let everybody know that you have a growing interest, and a growing expertise in men’s health, pain management, bladder health, dermatology, whatever it is.  And then as you get more patients in that particular area, and once you have enough that you can start backing off on the primary care, you’ll be able to just move right into that particular specialty and move forward and enjoy your practice a great deal.

Now this is something that I talked about not too long ago in Progress Notes, which are business tips for nurse practitioner entrepreneurs.  You can access archive by going to www.NursePractitionerBusinessOwner.com and clicking on Progress Note Archives.  If you would like to sign up for the newsletter there you can go ahead and do that there.  And I’ll see you next time for the next NPBO Minute.

Nurse Practitioners frequently have questions about what they can do and where they can do it. So rather than recreate a report, I’d like to share with you an excellent resource to get these questions answered. It’s the Pearson Report. It is published annually in The Nurse Practitioner Journal.

This report, available for download in pdf format, will answer most questions for NPs about practice across the United States. I encourage you to save a copy and refer to it frequently. And make sure you check for updates next year.