Growth Strategies for Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston If we at Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston (OCB) intend to be a profitable company with plans for continued growth, then we must make some fundamental changes in how we run our business. First we need to go back to the basics and write a business plan! The information in a business plan will help us determine who we are, where we want to go, and how we plan to get there. This basic information will focus us and serve as a guide for our future actions. Defining our intended strategies for management, operations, sales, marketing, finance, competition, etc. we will then have what is needed to chart a clear path for our future. If you all agree, I will start this task immediately! In addition to this business plan, we also need to address the financial issues plaguing this organization. To illustrate some of these issues, let's look at some of the trends here at OCB and in our industry: For example, the profitability of OCB's clinical operations in 1990 was 60%, and now in 1996 our profitability is only 37%, or down 23%. points! We can attribute some of this to increases in overhead costs, consumables, etc., however this is happening as the industry as a whole is growing at 5% annually and as our largely elderly customer base, population growing by almost 1% per year. We should take advantage of these industry trends, however, as you all know, not all trends work in our favor. For example, our lifeline, insurance company managed care organizations and government health reimbursement programs show a downward trend in allowable payments for our services (DRGs). For example in 1995 the DRG price of... half the paper... ...and focus on the variable costs. We could consider everything from disposable supplies, to customer gifts. For example: flowers, plants, photos. We could also achieve this by improving our efficiency and processing additional customers to increase billing. We have pent-up demand, as we can see from the trends, that is growing. We should carefully examine everything we do to process a customer. Some examples of where we could reduce time include: Clinical work asks clients about their medical history, problems, medications in a questionnaire that they can fill out while waiting, thus saving time on the job. Create a shelf for each doctor so that patient records are kept in order as per Works CitedMiguel, Maria Fernanda, ProfessorH. Kent Bowen. Boston Ophthalmic Consultants and Dr. Bradford J. Shingleton. Harvard Business School. Rev. May 20, 1997.