Dr. Sam R. Patel Explores The Benefits Of Transitioning To A Cash-Based Model

If you run a medical practice, you’re probably more familiar than you’d like to be with the many frustrations of working with insurance companies. And for medical professionals across virtually every specialty, that frustration is compounded by insultingly low reimbursement rates.

Dr. Sam R. Patel, a medical consultant and the founder of the medical business consulting company Astra Culture, has developed a strategy for owners of medical practices to preserve and increase revenue: transitioning to cash-based services. But is this strategy right for you?

“I convert all of my clients’ practices to cash-based models,” says Patel of his work with Astra Culture. “That’s our niche. We are here to help practices make a lot more money in an easier way. The owner can be a better business owner but also make more money and offer better care to patients. Everyone wins.”

Patel’s clients aren’t doing away with insurance altogether. Instead, Astra Culture introduces them to non-invasive, elective procedures. Once these practices start offering their patients cash-based elective procedures on top of the insurance-based care they already offer, they invariably see an increase in income with little increase in operating costs.

“Our specialties are wellness services and the implementation of non-invasive technologies,” says Sam. “That’s like hormone replacement therapy, medical weight loss, and regenerative medicine. That’s all we do.”

This might sound like a logical enough way to bolster your monthly revenue. But if you’re in a practice area that seems unrelated to cosmetics, that might give you pause. Sam and his team have developed a strategy to help just about any medical professional successfully integrate these new offerings without making the change seem like a gimmick.

“This subset of services can be applied to any specialty,” he says. “So if a surgeon or a family medicine doctor wants to do it and they don’t do it now, I can help them build that into their clinic. Typically, it’s not actually in their practice — it’s usually another brand within their practice. So if a client is Roosevelt Dentistry, it becomes Roosevelt Med Spa.”

This multi-specialty shift to cash-based services is an unprecedented one, and it’s been made possible by the development of the non-invasive technologies Patel works with every day. “Plastic surgeons and derms used to be the only people that did these sorts of services,” he says. “Now everyone can. That’s why we’re so in demand. Everyone’s trying to get into this game, but they don’t know how.”

Of course, it’s a lot easier to talk about making a transition to a cash-based model than it is to actually make that transition.

The key to success is making sure you have a plan that delves into the details: the kinds of services you’re going to offer, how you’ll train staff to perform them, and how those services will be priced and marketed to prospective patients and existing ones. The process can be a daunting one, but as any Astra Culture client can tell you, it’s well worth it.

Written in partnership with Tamara Smith