Allied Health Services
Examples:
Mental Health Providers, Physiotherapists, Exercise Physiologists, Occupational Therapists, Dieticians, Nutritionists, Naturopaths, Disability services, NDIS providers etc..
INDUSTRY DESCRIPTION
The Allied Health sector is broad and covers various sectors including clinicans and service providers. Its core business model is to hire experts/technicians, charge them out for more than what you pay them to cover overheads and profits and also add products onto your services that you on-sell for a margin. Operators have business-to-customer focus with a business-to-clinician network. Business success and scope for growth is largely linked to how the owner views their role. They’ll either identify themselves as someone who is on-the-tools or, as a manager/director who’s job is to provide sufficient work to their team and then make sure it’s done to an acceptable standard with a profitable outcome.
A typical life cycle for an Allied Health business is often beginning as an individual that breaks away from a larger organisation by taking a few key clients with them, they started from scratch or purchased a business from a retiring business owner.
How far the business expands will depend on the interest and intentions of the owner to add a team. Often this will depend on the type of clients that are being serviced. When larger premises are obtained and more customers are added, this will often trigger the need for more staff.
Allied Health Businesses get into trouble when they “gear-up” for more clients but find it difficult to ramp up workflow to meet the required income consistently to be sustainable.
When this happens the additional staff and associated equipment becomes an overhead that doesn’t have the revenue to support itself. Many Allied Health business owners experience this issue where they don’t want to let go of staff and equipment (because finding good staff is difficult, training takes time and equipment has often been purchased on credit) but they can’t find sufficient work to utilise the capacity they’ve created.
Many businesses can last for a while like this by adjusting their pricing to “feed the business”, but eventually realise they were making better money when the business was smaller. Hence some operators end up going back to the cycle of “do the work” then “chase the work” and being on the tools. Many allied health businesses stay at the 1-3 staff level when this is the case.
If the business gets sufficient workflow by niching or successful prospecting, they will begin the process of scaling up. This usually starts with splitting their workers into more teams and allocating a team leader. Admin support can also assist for invoicing, scheduling and maintaining systems. Many business owners hesitate to expand their businesses when they experience staff recruitment and retention issues.
Allied Health businesses struggle when they have insufficient work whereby they need to work on marketing and sales systems for the right clientelle. Alternatively they’ll have too much work whereby their marketing needs to focus on attracting people to work for them (as opposed to marketing for customers, they’re effectively marketing for staff).
When to get help
Owners of Allied Health businesses will tend to need help from a Business Advisor when they are either too busy and therefore need help to coordinate and improve the productivity of their team, or too quiet where they’ll need direction on how to break the cycle of “do the work” then “chase the work”. Typically we assist Allied Health businesses with an initial assessment of the capacity currently being utilised. Then we’re able to assist on how to optimise the current workflow before engaging in sales and marketing activities to drive profitability and reduce owner burnout