Fort Smith Launching Physician Business-Assistance Program on Arkansas Medical News Inc.

Fort Smith Launching Physician Business-Assistance Program

By: JENNIFER BOULDEN

Dr. Joseph Chan talks with University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Chancellor Paul Beran and his wife Janice Beran at the New Physician Reception held Thursday, August 30.

Physicians practicing in Fort Smith or relocating to the area now have access to support that few, if any, other physicians in the nation have.

In September, the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce, the City of Fort Smith, and the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith opened the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (IEC) at Fort Smith. The IEC’s mission is to create an environment that stimulates the community’s entrepreneurial spirit, develops entrepreneurial skills and creates programs that support entrepreneurs to enable the creation, stabilization and growth of companies and jobs. Although centers like these are becoming more prevalent in other states, the nonprofit center is the first of its kind in Arkansas. Moreover, one component of it — mentoring physicians and their office managers about the business side of healthcare — is possibly the first such program offered by an entrepreneurship center anywhere in the United States.

Director Michelle Hall’s hope for the physician mentoring program is that doctors will take advantage of her expertise and the IEC’s growing resources. “Physicians go through all those years of training and continual medical education throughout their careers, but they hardly get any education or support in the business side of things before they’re thrown into running one,” she said. “At its heart, a private practice or clinic is still a business, even though their concerns include much more specialization than other entrepreneurs for issues like HIPAA compliance, fraud and abuse detection, and all the paperwork.”

Hall is the first to admit she doesn’t know anything about treating patients, but she does know quite a bit about starting and growing viable businesses. Hall, who relocated to Arkansas from North Carolina, holds a master’s degree in entrepreneurship and has a career full of impressive successes, such as creating the grant-funded $2 million Entrepreneurship Development System in economically distressed and ethnically diverse regions in North Carolina. She understands revenue streams like physicians understand bloodstreams.

As part of the Chamber of Commerce’s larger $4.5 million economic development strategy, additional help is available for residents or established physicians and healthcare workers interested in relocating to Fort Smith to open a practice, clinic or health-related business. Hall said one of the things that attracted her to the region was that the chamber, the city government and the university were all already on board with the entrepreneurship plan. “That’s really rare to find,” she explained. “Usually, we struggle to bring everyone into a partnership for the community, but in Fort Smith, all the players were already committed to making something exciting happen.”
The IEC is not an incubator, and thus does not have capital to help new businesses, but it can help with practically every other part of the process.

“We’ll work with anyone interested in practicing here on finding the financial resources, creating a financial plan and a business plan, working with real estate agents, developing a marketing strategy, networking — anything we can do to make the process easier,” Hall said. “If there’s a need they have we can’t address, we’ll connect them to experts who can.”

Although it has two substantial hospitals, Fort Smith is facing a significant physician shortage, which the chamber, city and university hope the IEC can address by recruiting and retaining more physicians. “We don’t have enough doctors here, but the upside of it is, if someone wants to relocate to the area, we’ve got room for them in almost every specialty,” Hall said.

The mentoring program aims to help local practitioners run their offices more effectively. In addition to Hall, the mentors will be specially trained retired physicians who volunteer to help their colleagues using the IEC’s resources in much the same way as the Service Corps of Retired Executives works with small businesses. The first training has yet to occur, but Hall said that at a recent reception honoring newcomers to the physician community, there was considerable interest in the program, particularly from independent physicians.

Many doctors from Fort Smith and surrounding areas will receive their first introduction to the IEC’s services at Medical Business Boot Camp, a free series of two-hour seminars held on Tuesdays in October. Business owners and office managers in the medical field can attend to learn about the following topics:

Oct. 2 — The Nuts and Bolts of Starting Your Practice

Oct. 9 — Financing and Money Management

Oct. 16 — Insurance and Compliance Requirements

Oct. 23 — Policies and Human Resources

“We’re here to help,” Hall said, “and we really can. Some people just need specific help with marketing, others with coming up with a business plan or long-term strategy, and some want to use us but aren’t sure quite what their needs are. But we’ll work one on one with you to figure it out.”

For more information about IEC or to register for the Medical Business Boot Camp seminars, call (479) 242-3300 or visit www.iecfs.org.

October 2007