In this episode of the Practice Profit System, host Matthew Gillogly continues his four‑part series on moving a medical practice away from insurance reimbursements. He argues that the key obstacle for doctors is the lack of dedicated time to see cash‑pay patients. Drawing on Craig Ballantyne’s “7x7” time‑blocking framework, Gillogly explains how to split each day into seven chunks, reserving the first and last for personal routines and using the remaining five for work. He recommends carving out a minimum four‑hour block—ideally in the morning—exclusively for non‑insurance patients and protecting that block from staff‑scheduled insurance appointments. He illustrates the financial upside with an orthopedic surgeon who earned $34,260 from just two cash patients, contrasting it with the volume of insurance visits required for the same revenue. Gillogly stresses that during these cash blocks doctors should focus on income‑producing activities such as marketing and business development, not on administrative or educational tasks. He also promotes his upcoming Business Mastery Fellowship, a program aimed at helping clinicians scale to seven‑figure cash practices, and reminds listeners to claim a free copy of his book, The Anatomy of a 7‑Figure Medical Practice. The episode ends with a call to share the podcast and sign up for updates.
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Welcome to the Practice Profit System podcast. Do you own a cash-based practice? Are you looking to start one? Tired of working endless hours and still not making enough money? Want to fire your insurance company? Then you're gonna love our podcast. Each episode is full of insights and proven strategies to grow your practice to 7 figures and more, allowing you to take more time off, make more money, and no longer have to take insurance reimbursements. Plus, get a free copy of my book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Medical Practice, where I detail my entire journey to creating my own 7-figure practice. Just go to www.srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. You just pay $7.95 in shipping and handling, and you'll also get over $1,197 in free bonuses. That's www.srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. Now on to our show.
Hey everybody, it is Matt with another edition of the Practice Profit System. And today we're going to continue our 4-part series on becoming insurance-free. And today we're going to talk about how to carve out time for non-insurance patients, the power of time blocks. Now, this may, you know, you might be, what the hell is Matt talking about here? Look, this is gonna be really, really cool because I'm gonna give you a really simple formula of how you can create the time so that you can see the cash patients. Because the problem is, is that insurance is actually like the screaming 4-year-old at midnight in Walmart screaming for candy. And so you don't want to give in, but you do, and you wind up giving the candy to the kid just to shut it up. In reality, what we want to do is we really don't care about that. We want to create the space and the time so that we can have the space in order to take care of these non-insurance patients. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Now, before we go any further, I want to remind you that we are going to be relaunching our fall edition of Business Mastery Fellowship. This is our premier program for those of you that want to become insurance-free in '23, as one of my clients has coined it. And there'll be more information coming out about this. We've got a new version of this. It'll be our 3rd version. It's bigger and better. It's going to be even more intense. So be on the lookout if you are looking to scale your business to up over 7 figures. Business Mastery Fellowship is for you. So let's talk about the concept of creating time and space to grow your cash practice and non-insurance patients. The key to this is you have to block time, and it's critical for your long-term success. Now, I follow a writer and a personal development person by the name of Craig Ballantyne, and Craig is fantastic, and he has this model that he calls the 7x7 model. And the 7x7 model is really simple, is that you have the 7 days a week and you have 7 chunks of time every single day. Now, for me, and for a lot of people, those first— that first chunk of the day is actually for me, okay? This is— I do a lot of writing, I do a lot of journaling, I do a lot of reading, so I don't do any work in that first chunk. It's Katie and I get up, we have our coffee, journal, maybe I'll do some reading, we go work out. That's kind of my first chunk. The last chunk of my day, the 7th chunk, is again for reconnecting with With Katie, my fiancée at this time, at the time you listen to this, actually my wife. And so that last chunk is really mainly for winding down, reconnecting, having dinner with her, spending time with her. My son is with me that day, spending time with him. So that leaves 5 chunks throughout the day, 5 days a week. Now, I'll be the first to tell you, having run 5 startups, one of the things is that I do work Saturdays. I generally work a little bit on Saturday mornings. For me, I actually wind up working sometimes on Sunday afternoons. That's just kind of my window. Saturday for me is when I play golf, usually out on the golf course early. But I tell you that because I want you to understand this model, and you have to look at your calendar exactly the same way. And so if you look at— you have 5 Tom Blakes, 5 times a week. You have to decide who gets what, and you cannot jump from cash to non-cash patients. So the first concept that I want you to get, the first problem that I hear from doctors is they never have any time to see cash patients because in order for your business to keep treading water, you have to see 30, 40, 50, 60 patients a day in order for you to be able just to tread water and stay alive, and that creates a problem because there's no space for the things that make money. Okay, and you think, well gosh, if I don't keep seeing patients, then I'm gonna be in a lot of trouble. And let me let you in on a little bit of a secret. Block time. So you have to create time. That's problem number 2, you're so darn busy that there is no time. And then problem 3 is when I do block for cash only, the staff sneaks in insurance patients. So I'm gonna give you some very simple solutions. So first and foremost, you need to explain to your team why you are making the move to cash. So one of my clients did this, uh, recently, and he's an orthopedic surgeon and he's making the transition to cash. And what he did was they had a really great week this last week where they made $30,000 off of 2 patients. And, you know, he got paid upfront. He, you know, he doesn't have to wait for the money, but he laid out for them how many patients it would take in their insurance practice for them to be able to make that same kind of money. So I'm gonna— Actually read this to you because this is just absolutely mind-boggling, okay? So he actually did $34,260 in revenue off of 2 patients. He said that, plus that's much less overhead than insurance. He gets paid ahead of time, no 90-day free period. So that would equal 22 average surgeries for him. 90-day free period, post-op period, multiple staff members, overhead, bill out, And wait for the payment, or 221 average orthopedic visits, or 562 average physical therapy visits. Think about that. So here's my question for you. If you really want to grow this thing, if you really want to become insurance-free, you have to create space in your calendar. So here's what I tell people to do. You need to go into your calendar and you need to block 4 hours at a time. For non-insurance patients. But you say, but Matt, I don't have any non-insurance patients to see. Well, if you don't, then all you're doing is working on growing that portion of the non-insurance business. And I'm gonna give you a hint. You focus on generating non-insurance patients. You focus on marketing. You focus on generating the revenue. You don't focus on signing up for another symposium or another training class or anything like that. You focus on growing the business, the fundamentals of growing the business. So you have to have these time blocks of at least minimum 4 hours, and if your staff puts an insurance patient in there, you tell them to move it. It's that simple. I don't care how much Mrs. Smith calls and complains that she needs to come in and see you for her ingrown toe again, okay? So, and you focus on income-producing items, not procedure-based items in that time frame. This is really, really, really important, okay? All of my doctors who have made this switch And I've helped over hundreds of doctors make this switch, either through coaching programs or through podcasts. And the doctors that I've helped make this switch, they said that this is the key. Okay? You need to be able to find things that blocks of your time. And generally what I want you to do is they should not be blocks of time at the end of the day. They should be at the beginning of the day because that's when you are going to have the most energy. Couple of hints. I have a couple of doctors that don't go into the office when they're working on this, if they don't have any patients to see. That way their staff can't bother them with insurance things. If your staff or your manager wants to come in and talk to you about how we're going to fix this insurance problem, you go, done. Not going to talk about it today. Not during this work period. You have to— everything that you talk about, you think about, consider has to be about growing the non-insurance cash business. Okay? That is the key. See, you have to— if you don't carve out the time and put the time blocks in place, you will never have the space in order for you to have the non-insurance practice. It's just that simple. So big idea, blocking time is critical for your long-term success. This is how you will be able to get this done, and you have to make sure that you are being disciplined enough that you are creating these boundaries so that people can't come in and bother you and take over that time block. All right, so that's what I have for this week. Make sure that you're carving out time for the non-insurance patients. Block your time. Very soon, like I said, we will be launching our fall installment of Business Mastery Fellowship. Business Mastery Fellowship is for the medical professional that finally wants to hit 7 figures a year in their sales or med spas or anything like that. Any of you that are in the non-insurance cash space and you want to grow to 7 figures, this is for you. This is our premier program, and we are looking forward to sending out that information. Look for that coming out towards the middle or end of August. All right, you're on the email list. If you're not on our email list, go to the Practice Profit System And make sure that you sign up so that you get notified of all these great upcoming things. So that's what we have for today. Thank you for listening to the Practice Profit System. I am Matthew Gillogly, your weekly host, and thank you so much for taking the time. Have a great day.
Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, take a moment and share it with your fellow medical professionals, or post a positive comment and rate it on wherever you just listened. Now don't forget, you can get a copy of my book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Practice, for free. Just pay $7.95 in shipping. Shipping and handling. Plus, you'll get over $1,197 in free bonus material. Simply go to srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. That's srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next time.
