After finishing the schooling necessary to become a medical professional, you may be contemplating the next steps for your career. One of the possible options is to open your own medical practice, much like opening your own business.

Although you have many rules to follow when opening a medical practice, this is a popular choice because you have the freedom and flexibility to do everything your way. You can use practice management software to streamline many of the administrative functions, allowing you to reduce overhead costs and deliver your medical services in a more efficient way.

Starting your own medical practice requires a lot of steps, processes, and procedures. For starters, you will need the necessary information on how to obtain equipment, supplies, staffing, licensing, location, clientele, and more. To ensure you don’t forget anything else, you should coordinate a plan and consult with many resources before getting started.

Below are six essential steps to opening a medical practice on your own. Follow this tutorial to maximize your chances for success with the medical practice!

Step #1: Get advice from other medical experts.

The first steps to opening a medical practice is to seek advice from experienced professionals. It’s not a bad idea to hire a consultant or speak with other professionals in the industry who have undertaken the task before.

Now, don’t put all of your faith into one individual and use them as your bible for opening a practice. However, you should listen and learn from other people’s mistakes. Know what the risks are, and don’t be afraid to ask for advice and help from different people in your network. You don’t know what you don’t know, and anything you learn will help.

Step #2: Choose a community for your medical practice.

Before starting a medical practice, you need to consider the community that you will be serving. Who will be the clientele for your medical practice? You may want to consider communities that do not have easy access to doctors already, perhaps a small town, or a suburban area of a big city. Just like in any business – a coffee shop, a clothing store, or a gas station – location will make a difference as to how well your practice will realistically do.

You may have a bit of leniency on location if you already have a loyal following. If you go somewhere that is too inconvenient, your loyal patients may not have a choice but to ditch you. Unlike many private companies and businesses, there are a lot of regulations that go into the location where you’ll be offering your medical services. You need a number of rooms, and space for certain equipment, a waiting space, a reception area, and other such areas within the building.

When you find a location, consider whether you will have to do many renovations to make it suitable for your needs. If you want to serve an even larger community, starting an online medical practice could be a great option to reach an even bigger audience without the geographical restraints.

Step #3: Calculate the costs to starting a medical practice.

There are a lot of upfront expenses that go into starting a private practice. If it’s really what you want to do, then you need to calculate all your expenses so you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Consider your location – How much will it cost? What supplies will you need onsite to begin with, and how much will it cost to acquire those and keep them in stock? You will also have a lot of behind the scenes costs. Consultants, lawyers, accountants, software, hardware, staff, insurance – all of these things are going to run an upfront cost, and many will have ongoing costs as well.

Step #4: Create a tangible business plan for your medical practice.

The costs are one thing, but you will also need to make estimates on how you will get your money, how much money you are expecting to get in comparison to your costs. You also need to make goals and projections for both the short and long term.

Just as any business or company must do, as a medical professional running a private practice, you have to be in charge of the administrative side when it comes to ensuring your practice succeeds.

Step #5: Raise money for your medical practice.

Now that you calculated the costs and created a business plan, you need to find a way to raise money to start the medical practice. The steps to starting a medical practice will be expensive. You’re going to need lots of money to start on your journey of independence. This can be done via a business loan or personal funds.

To assist with the costs of starting a private practice, you may choose to get a partner to split everything with. However, that means you’ll also be splitting responsibilities and sharing decisions.

Step #6: Obtain medical licences and memberships.

To run a legal medical practice, you will need to have specific licenses and memberships. These may change from province to province. They could also be different in each country.

Be sure to find out which of these you need to open up a practice wherever you are, and make sure to acquire them before actually opening your doors. Any practice that you do without having the proper licensing is going to get you in serious legal trouble.