Get a step-by-step plan to strengthen your medical practice’s finances and operations.
When physicians and administrators are all on the same page, your practice will thrive. A free, no-obligation Practice Strategy Session with Stu Schaff, founder and lead advisor of The Best Practice, will help you clarify what your practice needs most right now and how to get there with confidence.
Schedule a Practice Strategy Session
The constant friction between physicians and administrators is undermining everything you’re trying to build.
Every medical practice faces its challenges. Solving these challenges requires everyone—physicians, administrators, and staff—to work closely together. But even though you’re all on the same team, you’re not moving in the same direction.
You feel it in every meeting and in every hallway conversation:
- Administrators feel blocked, second-guessed, or blamed
- Physicians feel overburdened, unheard, or unappreciated
- Critical initiatives stall because no one trusts the process—or each other
As a practice leader, you’re stuck in the middle. You want your practice to be a well-oiled machine, providing the best care to as many patients as possible, in a sustainable way. You know improvement is hard, but it always feels like you’re taking two steps forward and then two steps back.
If things feel hopeless, know that you’re not alone.
We’ve worked with leaders across more than 100 physician- and hospital-owned medical groups across the U.S., and we’ve seen this same pattern again and again: even when everyone agrees that things could be better, no one can seem to agree on what “better” means or how to get there. Frustration ensues.
So, leaders look for a quick win, often in the form of a new physician compensation model, one of the few things they feel they can control. For many years, we helped practices develop tailored physician compensation models that aligned physician incentives with practice goals (e.g., higher productivity, better patient access, larger panel sizes, improved quality metrics).
But even the best physician compensation models couldn’t move the needle the way we hoped. We felt like we were waiting precious time and money on solutions that looked good on paper and didn’t hold up in practice.
It turns out, we were building upon a shaky foundation of unclear expectations, dysfunctional operations, insufficient support, limited accountability, and cultural tension. We realized that addressing these underlying issues is the best way to find lasting success. This realization has become the cornerstone of how we partner with leaders to build high-performing medical practices that are in the best position to serve their communities for many years to come.
Schedule a Practice Strategy Session
A simple but powerful idea guides everything we do.
Over two decades of working with medical practices, we’ve observed that successful practices are clear in what they ask of their physicians and balance those expectations with what they give their physicians in return. We call this The Best Practice Pact and it’s the foundation for every practice improvement plan, every physician compensation model, all the work we do with medical practices.
In practices where there is no balance—often because leadership has spent a lot of time thinking about what/how they pay their physicians and a lot less time thinking about expectations, support, and accountability—it can be very difficult to address operational and financial issues. Everything snaps into focus when you take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Incorporating The Best Practice Pact into your practice will lead to:
- Physicians who are more engaged, collaborative, and aligned with your practice’s goals
- A practice culture built on clarity, trust, and shared accountability
- Improved retention and easier recruiting
- Compensation model that reflects how physicians practice instead of trying to drive it
- Leadership conversations that are more productive, less political, and actually move things forward
- More energy, more focus, and more time to lead (not just react)
We work with medical practices in a few different ways.
Advisory Services
Every practice is unique and so are the challenges you face. We’ll partner with your leadership team to uncover the financial, operational, and cultural barriers holding your practice back. Then we design high-impact, data-driven strategies that free up physician time, improve access, satisfaction, and overall performance.
Executive Coaching
You have a solid plan. Now, it’s critical to follow through, but that can feel impossible when you’re still trying to keep your practice running. We’ll be at your side, keeping you focused, resilient, and equipped to navigate complexity without losing traction.
Workshops
Our interactive sessions are designed to help you and your team quickly take the first steps on the path toward stronger alignment and a stronger practice, whether that involves a new compensation model, a cultural reset, or a leadership initiative.
Let’s talk about what your practice needs.
It’s important to us that we make the best use of our clients’ time, money, and other resources. That’s why we offer a Practice Strategy Session before we start working together. This free, 45-minute conversation with The Best Practice’s founder and lead advisor, Stu Schaff, is focused on learning more about the challenges your practice faces and determining whether we’ll be able to help you overcome them.
During your Practice Strategy Session, you’ll:
- Zero in on the true root causes of the biggest challenges facing your practice
- Explore whether The Best Practice is a good fit for you and vice versa—if not, we’ll tell you
- Decide whether an advisory engagement, coaching, or a workshop is the right next step
- Walk away with a new perspective, a plan, and no obligations
If you’re ready to find lasting solutions, let’s put it all on the table.
Schedule a Practice Strategy SessionA Message from Our Founder, Stu Schaff
I know you.
Every day, you try to keep dozens of balls in the air. You struggle with patient access, productivity, staffing issues, difficulty recruiting new physicians, and the constant fear of physicians leaving. Despite your careful planning, factors you can’t control keep getting in the way of your success. Sometimes it feels like the whole world is aligned against you. But you’re focused on the practice’s mission, you’re driven to serve, and you know that there’s got to be a better way forward.
I understand how you feel. That’s why I started The Best Practice, working with leaders like you to build high-performing medical practices that can provide great care and an excellent experience, in a financially sustainable way, for many years to come.
You shouldn’t have to do this alone. If you’re ready to build on what’s working in your practice and to throw out what’s not, we’ll be right there with you.
—Stu Schaff, FACMPE, FHFMA, Founder & Lead Advisor, The Best Practice
About Stu
Stu Schaff is an executive advisor, speaker, and expert in physician compensation and medical practice leadership. For nearly two decades, he has partnered with leaders from over 100 medical groups across the United States to address challenges around physician performance, recruitment, retention, and dissatisfaction with existing compensation plans.
Stu is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Practice Executives and a Fellow of the Healthcare Financial Management Association. He has been invited to speak to thousands of healthcare leaders at over 30 events hosted by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), and other influential groups. Stu’s insights have also been featured in multiple podcasts and in widely read publications like hfm and Becker’s Hospital Review.
As a trusted advisor, Stu helps medical group leaders design and implement optimally aligned physician compensation strategies that improve patient access, strengthen practice financials, and enhance their ability to recruit, retain, and engage physicians, putting them in the best position to improve the health of their communities.
