Latest / Medsolve Dynamics / The machine passes. The plan is not tested.
Transcript
- Yoel Bakas: I want to talk about the importance of your business plan. But before we do that, let's rewind to the acceptance. Acceptance in a treatment machine is a technical milestone, and it's a good one. Installation finishes, physics commissions the machine, and QAs it against the specification, and then you accept it. All of that happens before the first patient is ever treated on it. That process works, but it doesn't really tell the whole story. It doesn't touch the volume in your business case. It doesn't touch the case mix. It doesn't touch the date the service was supposed to open. Those are rarely in the agreement at all. I structured these agreements on the vendor side for many years. And what's in them in general is the machine. So the machine can pass every test, anyone whatever going to give it. And the business case behind it can still be wrong. And nothing in that sequence will tell you. Those numbers, unfortunately, live in one number. And that's a document that you created. It's your pro forma. Before you sign, go through the business case and mark which assumption somebody else is accountable for and which ones are yours alone. Unfortunately, most of them will be yours alone. And that's not a gap in the contract. That's the shape of the risk. And it's worth knowing and understanding before acceptance rather than 18 months after it. Acceptance will tell you what the machine is that you bought. It doesn't tell you if the plan around it was right. Put a date on the calendar now to read the pro forma against what actually happened.