How Plastic Surgeons Can Increase Profitability
In the current climate, all healthcare practices are furiously vying to stay afloat and improve their patient care. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a considerable number of medical practices including dermatological practices and plastic surgery clinics saw a sharp downturn in their revenue owing to the unavailability of dermatology supplies, an ever-changing economic landscape, and the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.
As the world returned back to normal, plastic surgery practices seem to have regained stability. However, maintaining profits can be challenging as the field has grown increasingly competitive. Thus, plastic surgeons need to consciously and actively push for their dermatological practices to focus efforts on gaining and retaining more patients, keep costs in check and thereby generate consistent profits.
There are several ways a plastic surgeon can increase profitability. Nevertheless, monitoring material costs and managing the availability of surgical supplies remain the most important. Although this is crucial, a plastic surgery practice must be able to obtain cost-effective dermatology supplies through supply chain procurement while ensuring quality patient care. This can help reduce costs and improve overall profits.
In the current global scenario, teaming up with the right dermatology marketplace can be a game changer for a practice to improve revenue and profits. Here’s Pipeline Medical’s take on how plastic surgeons can increase profitability while delivering excellent patient care.
Plastic Surgery and Dermatology Trends – A Bright Outlook
Before we dive into the question of profits, it is important to look at the macro-outlook and the industry backdrop. Cosmetic procedures are on the upswing, and over the years, plastic surgery is seen as an essential procedure by more and more patients.
People choose to undergo plastic surgery for many reasons such as the following:
- The Zoom Boom: Increased screen time through cell phones, social media platforms, and communication platforms like Zoom, have made more people observe and scrutinize their selves. This has driven people to desire plastic surgery and change what they don’t like about their appearance.
- Technological Advances: Cosmetic procedures continue to become more sophisticated, safe, and reliable with technology. The instruments and supplies that medical professionals use are rapidly evolving. There are multiple options available for treatments. Advanced devices and procedures allow personalized treatment, quick procedures, improved aftercare, and faster recovery.
- Increased Affordability: It was considered that plastic surgery could only be accessed by wealthy people. However, now, anyone can access and afford plastic surgery and other dermatological procedures. With more financing options and health insurance coverage, cosmetic procedures for medical reasons, such as clearing up burn wounds or a double mastectomy after breast cancer, have also become more common.
- Self-esteem: Plastic surgery helps many regain self-confidence and look as good as they feel. Beauty-enhancing procedures, like laser treatment for psoriasis, skin resurfacing, anti-aging, tattoo removal, skin rejuvenation, hair removal, acne, pigmentation, wrinkle removal, and so help patients improve their appearance and quality of life, thereby boosting their self-esteem.
- Health benefits: Procedures such as BOTOX® not only remove wrinkles but also have been shown to improve conditions such as chronic migraines and Bell’s palsy.
For many years, dermatological procedures such as breast augmentation, liposuction, rhinoplasty, eyelid surgery, and facelifts continue to remain popular. More people are interested in getting these procedures done as recovering from them has become much easier for patients. The increased interest in plastic surgery and dermatological procedures is expected to last even post-pandemic and plastic surgery trends are predicted to continue even after the masks come off. The increasing demand for beauty treatment and anti-aging procedures is also driving the market for cosmetic dermatological procedures. The increasing prevalence of beauty treatments is attributed to contributing to the market growth. This trend should turn out to be encouraging for old and new plastic surgeons.
Market Growth of Dermatology Supplies
Plastic surgery and dermatology are expected to become fast growing healthcare practices, with a 3.6% growth by 2026. Moreover, the global dermatology devices market is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.8% from 2021 to 2030. This growth can be attributed to the fact that plastic surgery is more widely accepted, universally accessible, easier, and more convenient than surgeries that require hospitalization. Furthermore, the technological advancements and improved post-procedure care make plastic surgery and dermatology fast-growing and profitable practices. The prevalence of diseases and the growing need for cosmetic and non-cosmetic surgical treatments are also driving the growth of the dermatology supplies market on a global scale.
The Big P – Profitability
Increased competition, healthcare compliances, and operational costs may pose huge challenges. However, if plastic surgery centers stick to performing popular, high-profit surgeries and procedures like BOTOX®, laser treatments, and so on, they are more likely to be profitable. To ensure profitability, a plastic surgery practice must optimize operations, find ways to save costs and improve efficiency.
Steps to Improve Profitability
Here are some steps for plastic surgeons to make their practice more profitable:
- Focus on popular procedures: The most common plastic surgeries in the US include rhinoplasty, eyelid surgery, facelift, liposuction, and breast augmentation. Dermatological procedures such as BOTOX®, soft tissue fillers, and laser skin resurfacing are also popular. This information can be valuable to understand which procedures are most profitable for a dermatological practice. It can also be used to customize marketing efforts while giving the people exactly what they want.
- Offer noninvasive cosmetic procedures: Most patients prefer pain-free procedures with quick recovery time over complicated surgery. Offering nonsurgical or noninvasive dermatological procedures can ease patients and boost a clinic’s patient load. Procedures such as BOTOX® and dermal fillers like JUVÉDERM® are great treatments to offer patients as they are simple and almost pain-free. But they have the potential for repeat business.
- Improve the Brand and Focus on Digital Marketing: Building a medical practice’s brand can help differentiate a plastic surgery clinic from others. This can be achieved by marketing the dermatological practice and building awareness through digital social media platforms. Focusing marketing efforts to rise above the competition and developing initiatives to improve the reach of practice can help boost the visibility and awareness of a practice. An increased reach can guarantee more patients, translating into greater revenue and subsequent profits. Tracking marketing results regularly and implementing changes accordingly as this can help enhance and target marketing efforts to reach those who need the services the most. Also, developing a quick-loading, mobile-responsive website that provides all the necessary information with all the required contact details to potential patients can do the trick as well.
- Benchmark processes: Benchmarking or comparing a plastic surgery practice with the competitors can help improve processes and in turn benefit a dermatology practice’s profits and performance. It can help identify the practice’s strengths and weaknesses and notice gaps in performance, quality, and revenue.
- Review costing: Reviewing the cost, time spent, and overall revenue of each procedure can help identify the most profitable procedures at a clinic. This can also help lower costs but still provide quality patient care.
- Patient experience: The experience a patient has at a clinic is of the utmost importance. Providing personalized attention for each patient can improve their experience through quality services and patient care. It translates into patient satisfaction and patient retention. This can certainly improve a dermatological practice’s profitability.
- Stay updated about advanced technology in the field: Patients often look for the latest, best, and most effective treatment available at a clinic. So, it is important for a practice to remain updated and keep on top of the newest procedures and devices. If a clinic has advanced dermatological supplies and offers the latest cosmetic procedures before the competitors, more patients will be drawn to that dermatological practice.
- Finding the right marketplace: The right medical marketplace can provide practice with the much-needed boost in terms of profits. Cutting material costs can enhance a dermatological practice’s profits like nothing else. The right marketplace ensures that a practice saves time, effort, and costs without compromising on the quality of patient care.
A Shortcut to Profitability?
Teaming up with a dermatology marketplace like Pipeline Medical can improve the efficiency of procuring supplies at the most competitive prices. For instance, a dermatological center in Georgia saved 30% cost of dermatological supplies by simply switching to Pipeline Medical.
The Foundation of Pipeline Medical
Pipeline Medical was established in the year 2007. It was founded by medical professionals for medical professionals. Back in the day, the medical professionals who built Pipeline found that their practices were suffering losses because they were overpaying for medical supplies. This was affecting their practices and cutting their profits. Furthermore, the founders noticed that the cost of medical and surgical supplies was much lower at hospitals than at private medical practices like their clinics and healthcare facilities.
These medical professionals went on to establish Pipeline Medical and transform the way medical supplies are procured. They aimed to create transparency and streamline the ordering process of clinics and other small to mid-sized medical practices.
Since then, Pipeline’s mission has been to be the ultimate one-stop-shop provider for all medical product and service needs for clinics and medical practices across the US. As medical professionals remained at the forefront of this endeavor, it was built to help medical professionals save time, effort, and money and simplify the process of ordering medical supplies. With Pipeline Medical working to provide quality supplies on time, medical professionals can focus on providing the best services for their patients.
Currently, Pipeline has put together and works with the best medical supplies manufacturers, distributors, and marketplaces from across the globe. Pipeline Medical also provides medical practices easy access to over 500,000 medical products and devices on one easy-to-use platform in the form of their website.
Pipeline Medical has now become an aggregate, establishing a robust relationship with global and national factories. Pipeline exclusively supplies and distributes high quality products directly from the factory. Moreover, Pipeline has grown to become the preferred marketplace for federal, state, and local government agencies.
From medical supplies and personal protective equipment to critical medical devices, Pipeline now serves the government, integrated delivery networks or IDNs, group purchasing organizations or GPOs, hospitals, and other markets such as Construction, Industrial, Hospitality, Retail, and Aviation.
Dermatology Supplies at Pipeline Medical
Pipeline Medical offers a host of quality products and services. In the dermatological supplies domain, Pipeline provides a wide variety of facial fillers, toxins, medical disposables, sutures, surgical equipment, pharmaceuticals, and medications. It also has sutures, surgical tools, and Mohs custom packs.
Pipeline Medical also offers a range of dermatological supplies from a well-connected network of medical marketplaces including well-known names such as Henry Schein and McKesson.
What are the advantages of working with Pipeline Medical for your Practice
Here are some obvious advantages of Pipeline Medical’s streamlined and transparent processes:
- Single source: Pipeline works exclusively with national and international factories across the world. It monitors the factory output closely to ensure compliance with federal regulations as well as industry standards.
- Competitive prices: Becoming a member of Pipeline allows medical practices to save from 20% to 50% on their annual medical and surgical supply costs.
- Consistency: Pipeline Medical maintains direct contact with the factories and manufacturers. This ensures that the supply chain is always maintained, and it never runs out of products. The team relentlessly strives to provide quick, accurate, and timely delivery.
- Ethics and responsibility: Stressing on the fact that Pipeline has been founded by medical professionals for medical professionals, it keeps in mind that the medical professionals need to focus on their patients. Timely delivery is critical, which is why Pipeline always provides a value-add service to medical professionals and other healthcare professionals.
- Materials management support and expertise: Pipeline Medical acknowledges the fact that the healthcare industry is all about saving time and effort to focus on patients. This is why there is a white-glove material management service team available for medical practices. The team ensures that supplies a delivered as and when required. This additional, free-of-cost service is available so that healthcare professionals can save from 10 to 18 hours per week.
Apart from this Pipeline offers consistent supply, allocation support, access to top brands and manufacturers, exclusive and direct factory connections, logistics expertise, seamless delivery, along with 15 years of industry experience.
How Pipeline Medical can Help Plastic Surgeons Increase Profitability
Pipeline’s motto is to provide the best services and products to medical professionals by medical professionals, as they understand the plight of running a medical practice. Pipeline’s unique business model thus allows for medical professionals and their medical facilities to save anywhere from a quarter to more than half on the current prices of brands a clinic uses regularly. Here, Pipeline functions as a group purchasing organization or GPO, distributor, and supply management company for a dermatological practice. This helps a dermatological practice save a total of 14 hours per week on medical supply management.
This will allow clinics to focus on their patients, resulting in greater patient satisfaction. This will help plastic surgeons scale up their practice and make it considerably more profitable without any additional time, cost, or effort.
If a healthcare professional subscribes to Pipeline services with a free membership, Pipeline allows them to enjoy the industry’s best material management services without any additional costs. Plus, the order will be shipped and delivered within 24 to 48 hours. For dermatological practices, Pipeline streamlines supply orders and also consolidates all the material management and administration functions to offer a smooth procurement process. With this, practices not only get quick delivery and management services but also save money and improve the dermatological practice’s profitability.
Along with this, Pipeline Medical allows a dermatology practice access to multiple top marketplaces, manufacturers, and marketplaces all through the same centralized web platform. Dermatology practices can access over 500,000 medical and dermatology supplies and find everything they need for their everyday practice in one place. Medical professionals and dermatology practices can thus rely on Pipeline Medical to stock up on their regular brand supplies at competitive, supply chain procurement prices.
Pipeline Medical values the time of medical practices and offers further value-add services. A dermatological practice is typically given a dedicated representative to ensure that the practice has everything it needs from products to people. This additionally saves practices a great deal of time, manpower, and money.
Pipeline Medical has built strong partnerships over the years with a unique structure. This has enabled them to provide average cost savings of 20% to 50% to dermatologists, plastic surgeons, and independent surgeons since their establishment. This heavily contributes toward the dermatological practice’s profitability. It is especially crucial because leading plastic surgery products such as BOTOX® and dermal fillers like RADIESSE® and JUVÉDERM® are expensive and have a very little profit margin on them.
With streamlined operations, material management support, and services offered for back-office functions, Pipeline Medical becomes a one-stop solution for all procurement needs. With the consolidation of multiple marketplaces, manufacturers, and GPOs, along with direct access to all the supply sourcing agents, Pipeline Medical ensures that a clinic or medical practice never runs out of dermatology supplies through great consistency and additional allocation support.
A Promising Future
Building a relationship with Pipeline Medical can help improve a dermatology practice’s profitability. But with that they can achieve the following:
- Seamless supply chain operations: Pipeline’s state-of-the-art services can help the practice operate an integrated supply chain. This will reduce excess expenses and wastage. It will also improve productivity and efficiency at the facility.
- Improved financial performance: A practice’s financial goals can easily be met with decreased costs and increased savings while allowing plastic surgeons and dermatologists to focus on their patients and offer superior services, quality of care, and patient satisfaction.
- Clinical infrastructure: With Pipeline Medical in place, plastic surgeons can build their clinical infrastructure, expand, and scale-up patient access and provide enhanced patient care.
Pipeline offers more than just competitive prices and seamless delivery. It has immense value-add with deep-rooted relationships with the best marketplaces and long years of experience in the field. The streamlining of the ordering process is another reason why medical professionals prefer Pipeline Medical. Furthermore, they offer static pricing so no time is wasted in negotiating for better pricing with current marketplaces. Pipeline Medical is not just the mediator but an aggregator helping medical practices get the best deal.
Good profitability is a sign of a healthy business. And using an aggregate like Pipeline Medical can help a dermatology practice easily lower supply costs and streamline the ordering process to optimally boost the bottom line of profitability.
The Bottom Line
Every practice seeks to ensure that their process and back-end function smoothly so that a medical professional’s focus can be where it should be – on their patients. But there are increasing numbers of plastic surgeons in the world and the competition only keeps increasing each year. The best way to set your practice apart from others is to join hands with Pipeline Medical.
At the end of the day, profitability is what every clinic seeks. And it cannot be equated to self-indulgence or greed because the more clinics profit, the better they can improve their services and quality of care for their patients. If profitability increases, a facility can upgrade its technology infrastructure and scale up to help more patients over a sustained period. Finding the right marketplace who provides your practice with all the essential materials with added value can remarkably optimize the smooth running of a medical practice. Such a marketplace must ensure that the medical practice receives its orders efficiently, saving not only time and effort but most importantly, costs, which can exponentially affect profits.
Medical professionals like plastic surgeons can significantly benefit from partnering with marketplaces like Pipeline Medical. There are significant cost savings that come with an aggregate provider like Pipeline Medical to not only boost the bottom line of profits but streamline everyday procurement processes. After all, medicines cure diseases, but only a medical professional can cure patients. And Pipeline Medical strives to support medical professionals by simplifying their job in every possible way as it values medical professionals and all their hard work the most.
The information provided on this site is for informational purposes only and is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider or medical professional for guidance on any medical concerns, product use, or treatment decisions.