Founded in the West Midlands by one of the UK’s leading colorectal surgeons, Medmin’s original core offering was to provide practice management and marketing services to surgeons operating in the private sector.
Over time it became increasingly apparent that there was a requirement to offer a more comprehensive package of business services, partnering with clinicians to develop and manage their growing businesses , with a particular focus on self-pay patients.
The scale and potential of the market opportunity was brought sharply into focus in the early months of the pandemic. With waiting lists at historic highs, private healthcare has become the only option for some patients.
The vast majority of clinicians in private practice operate as sole practitioners. This independence has come at a price, with private medical insurers and private hospital groups taking advantage of clinicians’ lack of market power to squeeze surgical fees and to impose ways of working with impunity.
Medmin offer clinicians the opportunity to operate as joint owners of a limited liability partnership. Each clinic is focused on clinical specialties in a specific geographical area of the UK. Clinic management is provided by Medmin, leaving the clinician to focus on delivering services to patients.
The various clinics are limited liability partnerships (LLPs), jointly owned by the consultants, who typically hold 80% and Medmin who own the balance).
This structure allows us to control all commercial aspects of the member clinics and by doing so, coordinate activities in a way that complies with competition law. As the clinic model expands, it will allow us to represent the interests of all member clinicians as we seek to ensure that their practices benefit from this aggregated model.
This model has the potential to be a powerful force in driving up service levels and in securing a better deal for our clinics when negotiating with suppliers of services, funders, facilities and other healthcare providers. Over time this will help level the playing field which, over the last 20 years, has been heavily tilted away from clinicians.
Medmin respects clinicians’ desire to operate flexibly, choosing when and where to work and which patients to treat.
Our Model
Medmin partners with like-minded consultants to set up and run successful multi-disciplinary private clinics, with a particular focus on the self-pay market.
The business offers consultants a turn-key solution, including:
Set-up
The legal formation into an LLP structure, designed to comply with competition law. Assisting clinicians in getting admission rights with local private hospitals, becoming registered with leading insurers and creating an online profile that ensures visibility to self-pay patients looking for treatment.
Administration
Medmin runs the day-to-day operations including patient appointments and liaison, patient records, hospital and room bookings. Medmin understands that a clinician’s time is precious, which is why it is imperative that their time is spent treating patients rather than on administration.
Billing
Medmin invoices patients and insurance companies, manages cash collection, banking and reconciliation and arranges payments for hospital services, specialist contractors and equipment hire. Each month clinicians receive an itemised report, detailing all fees due from patients and insurance companies.
Management
As the managing partner in each LLP, Medmin manages the business on behalf of the member clinicians, seeking out new opportunities, negotiating preferential rates from hospitals and insurers as well as investing in promotion and marketing of the members and their clinics.
Branding
Each LLP owns a number of different clinic brands that are designed to help patients find the treatment they need, online, as quickly as possible. These brands are condition specific with a website containing high quality information about the specific treatments our clinicians offer.
Marketing
Medmin promotes the patient facing digital clinics, building self-pay streams using both online and offline marketing, including PPC and SEO strategies. Experienced, trained medical administration staff, convert enquiries into appointments, ensuring patients are seen promptly.
Insurance
Medmin recognises the importance of comprehensive indemnity insurance and has partnered with a leading broker and insurance company to offer our clinicians a class-leading contractual indemnity product that ensures they are protected from any and all future claims.
Governance
The collegiate nature of our structure ensures clinicians are supported in their practice by colleagues and other experts – the “silo” mentality that has pervaded private practice has been the root of many of the issues we have seen in private healthcare – we are improving outcomes for patients and clinicians.
Self-Pay – The Future of Private Practice
The self-pay market for private healthcare is booming. A huge backlog in NHS elective surgery means that for many people, non-critical surgery will be delayed or deferred.
Independent of both insurers and hospital groups, Medmin is ideally positioned to reimagine how elective surgery can be delivered, ensuring a better experience for both patients and the doctors that treat them.
Reaching the growing market of self-pay patients is becoming increasingly important and as an independent, we can communicate in ways that the existing market makers cannot. Improving access to private healthcare for the 89% of the population that do not have insurance while working on behalf of patients and doctors to drive down costs and increase efficiency.