Running a private medical practice in the UK is so very different from working in the NHS. When you work for the NHS as a doctor or surgeon you are an employee, albeit a well-paid one, and all that you have to do is to carry out your job.

OK, fair enough, it can be an exhausting and time-consuming job because you can very easily work a 12-hour day, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for family and sleep, and anything else that you might want to do. However, you do get paid holidays. But most doctors go into the profession with the most altruistic of motives and that is to help their fellow man. Yes, it’s well-paid, but most doctors enter the profession first and foremost in order to learn how to help other people when they have any sort of illness or sickness, and that is how it should be.

However, working 12-hour days in the NHS can become tiring, and this is probably the main reason why many doctors and surgeons choose at some point to go into private practice. That and the fact that, although the pay in the NHS is good compared with many other professions, you can still earn a lot more in private practice.

However, with that comes a lot of overheads. Suddenly you have to find premises from which to work and install all of the equipment that you need in order to do so. Not only medical equipment, but desks, chairs, and so on for your patients in reception, and pay for a receptionist as well. You have to pay for telephones, heating, lighting, and – probably more than anything – all of the hardware and software that you need in order to take care of the huge amount of admin that you now have to do yourself, whereas in the NHS that was all taken care of for you. All you had to do then was attend to your patients and keep all their records on your computer.

Suddenly, you have to do all of that yourself, which is why many private practices employ a practice manager to look after the admin side of things so that the doctors can spend their time attending to patients which, let’s face it, is the only way that you earn any money. And of course, practice managers don’t come cheap, either!

Then there are all the other problems which arise, such as the fact that when you employ receptionists, practice managers, nurses, and technicians, unfortunately they all want holidays as well, and worse – they might even go sick! In a private medical practice!

Add to that the fact that you need a practice management system, which also costs a lot, and there are probably some days that you wake up and wonder why you ever left the NHS in the first place!

While we are on the subject of a practice management system, that is another major problem. When you start your own private practice, it is probably just you and, maybe, the missus acting as receptionist. All of which is fine, except that as you take on more and more patients and your practice gets bigger you need much more than just a basic computer and EMR software, although both of those are critical, of course.

You may well take on other doctors as partners in your business, and each of them will need exactly the same services that you do yourself. The more doctors you have in your practice, the more supporting staff you will need, and suddenly the whole thing can become overwhelming. Yes, you may have a very profitable business, but the admin side can get very difficult. Always bearing in mind, of course, that whatever stage your business is at, the only time you and your fellow doctors make any money is when you are seeing patients. All those hours spent on admin earn you nothing. Zilch. Nada. Not a penny.

This is why you need to consider the expansion of your business very early in the proceedings. And why you need to spend some time examining exactly what sort of software you need to run your business so that it is an outstanding success. There is a lot of different software out there, and you need to get the one which best serves your particular practice.