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Saturday, January 9, 2010
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Difficulties in Starting a new Sleep Lab
Sleep Lab is a health care business. And like all health care businesses its success depends on two additional factors that are unique to health care industry. The first one is the doctor and the second one is the health insurance company.
Unlike other businesses, where you only have to convince your final customer to buy goods and services from you, here you have to convince a doctor, an insurance company and a patient.
You need doctors' order to run sleep tests on patients. You have to convince the doctor that you will take good care of his/her patient. Not only that, but you have to make sure that doctors' office staff remember to refer to your lab. They are the people who are actually going to fax sleep study order to your sleep lab. For them to remember that you are out there you have to spend some money to remind them about it. So you have to spend considerable time and resources in marketing your lab to doctors and their office staff.
You have to be in network with the insurance company to be able get their business. By being in-network with the insurance company means that you have already signed a contract with the insurance company to accept a very low price for your services.
In some states you have to get accredited by American Association of Sleep Medicine (AASM) in order to get accepted by Medicare. Accreditation process is very rigorous. I think that it is necessary to make sure that people are getting quality care. But still this is another hurdle to cross before your business gets profitable.
Unlike other businesses, where you only have to convince your final customer to buy goods and services from you, here you have to convince a doctor, an insurance company and a patient.
You need doctors' order to run sleep tests on patients. You have to convince the doctor that you will take good care of his/her patient. Not only that, but you have to make sure that doctors' office staff remember to refer to your lab. They are the people who are actually going to fax sleep study order to your sleep lab. For them to remember that you are out there you have to spend some money to remind them about it. So you have to spend considerable time and resources in marketing your lab to doctors and their office staff.
You have to be in network with the insurance company to be able get their business. By being in-network with the insurance company means that you have already signed a contract with the insurance company to accept a very low price for your services.
In some states you have to get accredited by American Association of Sleep Medicine (AASM) in order to get accepted by Medicare. Accreditation process is very rigorous. I think that it is necessary to make sure that people are getting quality care. But still this is another hurdle to cross before your business gets profitable.
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