Can The FABI Meeting Reinvent Your Practice?

Recently, I read the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons bulletin and the results of its membership survey. Some of the most interesting findings in the results showed a huge desire for more education on practice management and marketing.

Last weekend, I attended a clinical symposium in New York City. One day at lunch, I was sitting at a table with a bunch of people I didn’t know and heard several of them bemoaning how tough practice was and in particular the practice management side of things. Several said they wished there were a resource to help them with the trials and tribulations of the business side of things and help them grow their practices.

Nearly every week of the year, you can find a clinical and surgical conference of some sort around the country. Some are local. Some are national and some are international. All have value. At many of these conferences, there may be a lecture or two about practice management. Usually, this entails some coding updates and compliance recommendations. Rarely, if ever, are there lectures that get into the nuts and bolts of how to run a business in medicine.

Surveys also show that most podiatrists are business owners and in single physician practices or small groups. Experts in healthcare universally say practices like this will find it increasingly difficult or impossible to survive in the changing healthcare paradigm.

In the early 2000s, the Weil Foot and Ankle Institute hosted a seminar called “Surgery to Coding, How to Build a Million Dollar Podiatric Practice.” We combined lecture and cadaver workshops focusing on current trends, practice management and surgical skills. That conference was well received and we did it several times. To this day, I have people tell me that conference hugely impacted their practice and changed the course of their career. It is a very satisfying thing to hear.

For years, people said to me, why don’t you create a conference on practice management and the business of medicine? People felt that we had a lot to offer since we had built a practice of 15 physicians and 10 offices throughout Chicago, incorporating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), physical therapy and a surgery center. Today, we have 30 physicians in 20 locations in Illinois, Southern Wisconsin and Northwest Indiana with immediate plans to open offices in New York City and Los Angeles, and partner with other practices around the country.

Well, three years ago, I finally listened.

I joined forces with Greg Berlet, MD, Chris Hyer, DPM, FACFAS, Terry Philbin, DO and Lowell Scott Weil Sr., DPM, FACFAS, to create Foot and Ankle Business Innovations (FABI). Our focus in this partnership was innovation + efficiency = profit. Every session we created for the event developed around these guidelines: will it help practices be more innovative, efficient and profitable? Will it improve patient care? Will it help improve the systems and training for the office staff who support those patients every day?

We started small and in January 2014 had 50 people in attendance for our inaugural meeting. At the end of the meeting, people said it was the best conference they had ever attended, surgical or otherwise. Stephen Barrett, DPM, even blogged about it on this very site (see https://www.podiatrytoday.com/blogged/coming-cold-recognize-essential-elements-business-survival ). Our participants included people who had been in practice for 32 years and some for only a couple of years. I remember the one doctor, who had been in solo practice for 32 years, saying the conference re-energized him and had him more excited about the profession than at any time in his career. A year later, he shared with us that he had improved patient care, increased patient visits and outcomes and increased his practice revenue by a whopping 28 percent over the previous year.

Last year, we fine-tuned the meeting after getting feedback from previous year attendees and had 150 people in attendance, many of whom came back for their second year. I have had people call or email me over the course of the year thanking me for giving them the tools to make such a positive impact on their patients and practice. This type of feedback is what keeps us motivated to continue to deliver impactful content in a non-customary setting. This meeting is not “experts” standing at a podium going through a PowerPoint presentation. Rather, this meeting has people with experience and success interacting with attendees in a collaborative and casual setting that is like nothing I have seen in medicine.

In 2016, the third annual FABI meeting will be January 28-31 at the Loews Chicago O’Hare Hotel, which is minutes from the O’Hare International Airport. For more info, visit www.FABI2016.com .

If you are interested in growing your practice, no matter the size, this conference is for you. We have had one-practitioner practices that want to increase their patient volume and improve systems benefit from the conference.  We have had people in practice for years get re-energized. We have had large multi-physician, multi-office practices discover hugely impactful information that they have utilized to improve patient care and profitability. There is something for everyone. Many of our registrants for next month are people who have attended in the past and are now bringing partners, colleagues and office staff to feed off the excitement and energy of this event.

Next month, we will talk about how to thrive in 2016 and beyond. We will talk about the five technologies that practices should not be without (including the best apps to use for your practice.) We will discuss some “tips, quips and pearls” of clinical and surgical practice, and how to ethically maximize revenue while providing better patient care. We will show you how to add retail to your practice and stop letting money walk out the door, and improve by offering new services that patients desire. We will cover high level coding and how to use accepted resources to properly justify your claims and collect the money you deserve. 

Business is more than just working. We discuss high-level business metrics as a way to measure financial performance, discuss reporting and dashboarding necessary to fully operate a successful business no matter the size.

We will discuss how to recruit, train and implement the right team to help a practice succeed. We will share lessons we have learned when adding associates. We will show you what ancillaries to add to your practice to perform better patient care and how to incorporate them effectively. We will have sessions in which we work individually with attendees on their biggest practice problems and give actionable recommendations that one can implement immediately.

We have an incredible session about how to market yourself and your practice in this competitive environment. We will have marketing experts speaking on ways to increase the volume of the type of patients you want nearly overnight.

There is no other conference that can offer all this.

Does this sound like a lot to cover in three days? You bet it is. We start early and go late. People do not leave their seats for fear that they will miss a pearl. 

We also have industry partners who are there to help you improve patient care and profitability. We are selective when it comes to which companies are allowed to attend and we partner with them to create deals and incentives that are not offered anywhere else.

Over the last three years, I have found little in my professional life as gratifying as FABI. I consistently have people thank me for starting FABI and see the joy that people have found in their practice as a result of FABI.

If you are looking to improve your patient outcomes, if you are looking to increase your profitability, if you are looking to improve your chances of survival in the coming new medical environment, find the time to come to Chicago and experience the impact that FABI can make on you.

Don’t wait another year.