How to Run a Practice Without Running Yourself Into the Ground

The practices that thrive are those that have removed administrative friction from the clinical team entirely. Here is what that looks like in practice.

Running a general practice in Australia has never been more complex. Between managing Medicare billing, accreditation requirements, staff recruitment and patient expectations, the administrative burden on practice owners has grown substantially over the past decade.

At Doctors & Co, we work with hundreds of clinicians across Australia and we see a clear pattern: the practices that thrive are those that have removed administrative friction from the clinical team entirely.

The Hidden Cost of Admin

Research from the Australian Medical Association suggests that GPs spend up to 30% of their working week on non-clinical tasks. That is time not spent with patients, not spent on professional development, and not spent on the aspects of medicine that drew clinicians to the profession in the first place.

The answer is not simply hiring more admin staff ? it is building systems that remove the need for clinical staff to be involved in administrative decisions at all.

What a Well-Run Practice Looks Like

The practices in our network that operate most smoothly share a few characteristics: automated billing workflows, clear delegation of responsibilities, accreditation processes that run in the background rather than consuming weeks of preparation, and technology that connects the clinic rather than adding complexity to it.

If you are spending more than four hours per week on practice administration personally, it is worth having a conversation about what that time is costing you ? and what it could look like differently.