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March 27, 2026
March 20, 2026
The responses most practices use when revenue falls short are not wrong. They are correct inside a model that does not include the variable causing the problem.
Your income statement shows what you collected. It does not show what collections cost you, what you were prevented from collecting, or what you would have collected if the price had been set by a market instead of by a contract.
Every game has rules. Medical reimbursement is no different. If you accept insurance, you need to know who wrote yours. Because what separates a fair game from a rigged one is who writes the rules.
The insurance companies hired the experts. Did the math. Built the models. And discovered they could take from you, take from your patients, reduce economic welfare, and pocket the arbitrage of the deadweight loss they created.
Most business decline does not come from bad decisions. It comes from reasonable ones. Another hire that seemed necessary. Another expense that felt justified. Another expansion that worked last time. Another accommodation to keep things moving.
Most business owners understand cost through an accounting lens. Cost is what reduces profit. It is what leaves the bank account. It is measured, categorized, and reported after the fact.
You didn’t go into medicine to run a business. You went into it because you wanted to help people. You endured the education, the residency. the clinical hours, the debt, the years of building. Somewhere along the way, you realized that truly helping people would require owning the practice that lets you.
What Growth Actually Measures A three-provider veterinary practice generates $2.4 million in revenue. The owner adds a fourth provider, expands the facility, and hires two more technicians. Revenue rises to $3.1 million. Growth.
Every business is a conversion process. Inputs enter. Outputs emerge. Between the two sits something that most operators never formally examine: the production function. It is the structural relationship that governs how labor, capital, and organizational knowledge translate into the goods and services the business produces. It exists whether or not you have named it.
Every accountant who took microeconomics in college learned about Production Theory, most likely in their first semester. It’s the idea that all businesses, whether they cultivate cannabis, manufacture widgets, or operate retail stores, face constraints from three specific forces that determine profitability.
