The Advantage of Knowing Where to Focus

Choose Growth Opportunities That Build on Your Practice’s Strengths

By Mark Connett | Founder & CEO, RxHarmony

Practice owners rarely lack opportunities. A new service, product line or partnership can promise another way to serve patients and grow revenue. The harder decision is choosing which opportunity deserves your team’s attention.

Every addition uses resources that could go elsewhere. Before asking how to launch a program, ask whether it belongs in the practice you are trying to build.

Start With the Strength Patients Already Value

I believe depth beats breadth. If patients choose your practice for personalized care, growth should preserve the time and attention behind it. If they come for expertise in a particular area, expansion should build on that expertise.

Look at the services patients return for, the work they recommend to others and the capabilities your team has developed. Those strengths give you a starting point for evaluating what comes next.

A promising opportunity should have a clear connection to a patient need and to your practice’s direction. Popularity alone is a weak reason to add it.

Count the Full Cost of the Opportunity

Potential revenue is only one part of the decision. An offering also takes staff time, training, management attention and ongoing support. The question is what it contributes after you account for that work.

In my consulting work, I recall a practice owner adding cosmeceuticals alongside an existing supplement offering. The reasoning was understandable: patients were buying those products somewhere. But within six months, the practice removed them because of the volume of calls and questions the team had to manage.

The offering had an audience. The practice still had to decide whether supporting it was a good use of its resources.

Before expanding, consider what your team would need to stop, postpone or support differently. That tradeoff belongs in the growth decision.

Choose What Deserves Your Attention

A service can fit your patients and still arrive at the wrong time. If the team is already stretched, adding another priority can weaken the services patients value today.

Be specific about why an opportunity deserves investment now. Is it a natural extension of your expertise? Does it address a recurring patient need? Can you give it the attention required without undermining existing priorities?

Clear answers make it easier to commit resources—and to defer opportunities that do not yet fit.

Evaluate Support as Part of the Business Decision

This is one of the problems I set out to address with RxHarmony: how can a practice pursue a suitable program without building every part of the supporting operation itself?

Depending on the selected program, RxHarmony helps coordinate the work around patient participation. For a practice owner, the strategic question is whether that support makes the program a better fit for the team’s capacity and goals.

Before committing, understand what your practice would invest, what support is available and which responsibilities your team would retain. Those answers help you judge the opportunity as a whole.

Use the Three Question Filter

Before committing to a new program, ask:

• Does it build on our strengths and a clear need among our patients?
• Is the opportunity worth the time, attention and resources it will require?
• Can we support it without weakening the services patients already value?

A clear yes deserves a closer look. Uncertainty shows where more work is needed before you commit. Focus gives your practice a basis for deciding which opportunities to pursue—and which to let pass.