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With an on-site medical fitness center, your health system has the potential to achieve a number of meaningful goals, including both short-term and long-term results—those include improved patient recovery outcomes and higher levels of community wellness.

However, if your center isn't financially stable, those important gains could sputter and disappear. That's because without policies that ensure financial sustainability, the numbers just won't add up over time. Even with significant benefits, there's only so long a center can operate at a loss.

The good news is that putting some strategic tactics into place can lead to financial stability and ensure that your medical fitness center has the foundation needed to thrive well into the future, creating all those advantages and outcomes along the way. Here are three to consider for a starting point.

Assess how you're defining success
For some medical fitness centers, there actually is no larger definition of what constitutes a successful operation. For instance, merely keeping the doors open might seem like enough. Yet, that type of low bar for achievement can lead to instability because there are no articulated goals that drive operational performance and improvement.

While a health care system has metrics in other ways—cost per patient, for instance, or readmission rates—fitness centers are often left out of this type of process and analysis. Over time, lack of understanding about how "success" is defined can lead a bottom line to turn from black to red, and stay there.

When that happens, any type of financial hit can have even more of an impact. For example, if a pool line breaks and that part of facility isn't available for several weeks as it's being repaired, that can have a ripple effect on membership sign-ups and physical therapy appointments. Potential members and patients will go elsewhere. If your center is run in a more financially stable way, this type of inconvenience may present a temporary challenge, but it won't be a dramatic downturn that takes months for financial recovery.

Because of that, success should include resilience in the face of unexpected changes. Notably, some medical fitness centers had to shutter permanently after Covid, or they're still trying to catch up when it comes to member recruitment. When resilience and financial health are part of your definition of success, even large-scale changes can be handled.

Consider whether you're spending too much on administration
In running a health care system, administration is key, because there are so many components within the operation of a hospital, clinic, research facility, and other aspects of a system. Even the way a hospital cafeteria is run requires a higher level of maintenance and oversight than a similarly sized restaurant would, considering how a cafeteria provides multiple tiers of service.

Many systems bring that approach to a medical fitness center, but that tends to make a center's operations too top-heavy and inefficient. So much funding is being utilized for admin that it causes stagnation with membership recruitment and center upkeep. In a worst-case scenario, a center will be "upside down" in terms of priorities, causing consistent financial instability.

Determine whether to bring in experts
There are many instances within a health care system's operations when external insight and management can be key for better operational management and financial health. For example, a food program may be run by an outside company that does hiring, procurement, and off-site meal preparation. Or a system may ensure adequate nurse staffing levels by coordinating with a travel nurse agency that can fill scheduling gaps.

The same is true with medical fitness center management, particularly because an external provider has the resources, insight, and experience to apply the lessons of multiple healthcare system engagements to a center's operation. Rather than a few administrators on staff who have limited background with running this type of center, a provider that manages multiple medical fitness centers understands the potential challenges and overlooked opportunities that can affect financial stability.

As that type of provider, HealthFitness brings strategic perspective through extensive client engagements, but also considers each center's unique needs when it comes to financial health. For instance, we look at every single department piece by piece to look at variables like cost and performance. We budget down to every paperclip.

That type of comprehensive oversight is what's needed for long-term sustainability for a medical fitness center. These centers shouldn't just be a "nice to have" component of a healthcare system—they provide a powerful and meaningful way to improve health for a breadth of members, including patients, staff, and community members. Yet, those advantages are lost when a center isn't sustainable. Focusing on financial stability is key for any center, in any location, and acting now to achieve that can make a center more resilient and self-supporting.

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