IMP seeking advice to make future financial projections

[Guest guest]

Hi folks,

I write to share the experiences I've had over the last 10

mo. of IMPing in the hopes that people will throw out some ideas and

share wisdom. We (my husband and I, no employees) are a neuro IMP

in a rural, working-class area in Central Vermont with a well-known

disproportionate amount of Medicare and Medicaid.

We are finding that it is taking a long time to establish a

patient base and I wonder if there are any specialists out there who

can let us know how long it took to build a base of patients who

needed to return for f/u. With such a large percentage of our

appointments being new patients, we are really struggling. I am

having trouble projecting out, i.e. for every 10 new patients we can

reasonably expect that X number will need 1-2 f/u appts. over the

next few weeks, X number will probably be long-term keepers needing

Q6 mo. f/u for years, and X number won't need any f/u. The reason

we can't project out is that there was a great toilet flushing when

we first came to town, and the first 5-6 months of patients were not

representative of what is coming in now, both in terms of diagnosis

and socioeconomic background. (For the first full 6 months, we saw

less than 10% private ins., and 90% Medicare and Medicaid.) We are

new to the area so it is taking a while to build a reputation, but

we seem to be well received. I am interested to hear about how long

other practices took to meet equilibrium, and " financial maturity " .

It seems that " financial maturity " might be qualitatively different

for specialists—because some new appts. don't need f/u.

I'd be grateful for any wisdom anyone might have to share.

Thanks,

Schulz-Heik