"The amount of knowledge you have about
medical practice business management and
medical practice marketing is comparable to the
amount of medical practice business success
and income you will have."
Business and marketing education for medical doctors is a non-issue even in the postgraduate arena. Wouldn't you love to go to a medical professional conference at least one time in your life when the focus of that meeting was strictly on medical practice management? At least for once, to have an experience where a single critical aspect of medical practice business planning and success is finally taken seriously by the medical profession itself.
I happened to notice in my college newsletter (ACOG) in Mar. 2011 that a Junior Fellow ACM course was to be taught to doctors transitioning from residency to practice. I was delighted to see that one of the speakers was giving a presentation about medical practice business.
Being curious about what background Scott D. Hayworth, M.D. might have for this important topic, in light of the fact that medical schools could care less about teaching medical students about business, I Googled him on the net. Although there were more than a bunch of search engine listings about him, I found that he had no background education concerning business or marketing, only personal experience.
So, once again I see a medical doctor teaching other physicians who apparently has the same knowledge about business and marketing as the audience does--indicating to me again that this education topic about the business of medical practice is unimportant in the eyes of the
medical practice business hierarchy.
Beyond that, whoever offered him the lecture topic on medical practice business management must have had the same impression about the value of the topic. That is... unless they couldn't find anyone else willing to give a talk about business who was seriously qualified to do so. Could it be that the committee didn't have enough money to afford a highly qualified person to
give the lecture?
When I faced the exact same situation coming out of my residency with my family and ready to start my practice and almost broke, it would have been the perfect time for some expert on medical practice management to have dumped all their information and knowledge on me. It certainly would have made a huge difference to me about what I would do next.
In our present economic environment, another transitioning phase has evolved following the end of the training phase, which affects all new physicians. Judging from the educational debt on the shoulders of new physicians, it's quite obvious they would not have enough money to start a private practice, unless they were independently wealthy, or had a rich uncle.
It forces new physicians to become an employee for 5 or 6 years to save up enough money to start private practice. I'm not saying that's bad, but it certainly delays any medical practice dreams, goals, and expectations a young physician might have, while managing the other aspects of life, family,
and politics.
Combine all the above with the lack of legal caps on malpractice verdicts, increasing fee restrictions by the government, a rapidly decreasing respect for physicians and their status, and having to live in a low middle class lifestyle and you have every reason for being terribly disappointed
with the profession.
My conviction is that a great deal of these stresses, barriers, and millstones around the neck can be relieved only by having a sound knowledge of business and a working knowledge of marketing at the very least.
Although I will continue to bang my head against the "walls of tradition and dogma", I still get great satisfaction in knowing I may have made a little difference in a few individuals along the way, and maybe, somehow, someone will pay attention to my preaching and finally do something about it. If I had 5 million dollars, I certainly would be shaking up a few heads.
My story about that topic may stir up a few unpleasant memories in your past experiences with starting your first private medical practice business...
About a month before I left the Kaiser Permanente Group, I met a great local OBG physician at a local medical society meeting that I had just joined. Our discussion about his private medical practice over the previous 15 years locally let to his pending decision to recruit help in his overflowing medical practice. After explaining to him that I was ready to quit Kaiser Permanente and start my own private medical practice locally. He agreed to send his overflow of patients to me to help me get started in my new practice.
The thought that I was starting a real business never entered my mind. I never had any education in economics, financial management, business management, or how to start a business and since so many physicians had done the same thing, I shouldn't have any issues to worry about. I found an office where two pediatric surgeons were practicing two days a week from the nearby city. They agreed to share the office and rent with me.
The next problem was to set up a business system for my medical practice that I knew nothing about. After spending several days in the local doctors offices, primarily with the office staffs, to find out about their office accounting system, what products to buy, how to set up the books effectively, and how to handle the payment procedures.
It was then that I discovered that there were several different systems available to use, so I picked one that seemed good. The front desk lady that had been working in medical offices for many years and who the two pediatric surgeons had hired was very helpful to me in doing the right things the right way--she mothered me a lot.
After a few months the patient load became heavy enough for me to find another office or ask the surgeons to find another office. It was not a problem for them because their patient load had dwindled to almost nothing by then. A very common problem that most physicians with satellite offices contend with.
A few years later I rented a satellite office, lost a lot of patients at my main office, and never found that the satellite patients were willing to move to my primary office--and recognized a large drop in the practice income. Nurse practitioners were not around back then, but they would have been the right person for the satellite offices. I would never do that again, without an associate physician.
To paint a clearer picture of my startup, I did what thousands of physicians had to do over many decades to get started in private solo medical practice. I scrounged up a bunch of ideas, from a bunch of other medical offices, made use of the reused information that had been passed down through the physicians in the area, who also never had any business education of their own.
Then, over the next several years, you pick up more ideas about office and business management during conversations here and there. That's when you find out what the other physicians never told you when you stated the practice. You also notice all the mistakes you have been making along the way. It's an on-the-job-training and learning education.
In that kind of constantly changing advice, business procedures no one finds out about until its too late to save their medical practices from the curse of financial failure. And all the while that all these physicians are watching their medical practice disintegrate, most have no idea why it is happening. They believe they have done something wrong that caused it. But can't figure out what it was.
With loss of their medical practice and loss of income, family problems arise that stagger the imagination. The consequences are life changing and continue sometimes for years. Divorce, bankruptcy, moving elsewhere, psychiatric problems, reputation ruined, even loss of their medical career can and do happen.
When one looks closely at these situations, one has to ask themself, "Why is this happening so often to so many physicians across this nation in increasing numbers?" Is it any wonder that American male students have stopped applying to medical schools? The tragedy has a cause and I describe it in detail in my published book--"The Wounded Physician Project"--
Why is it that not a single person or group of influencers over the last century has noticed such an egregious problem in medical school education? Do you realize that contrary to the world-wide business principles that has led our nation into an advancements far beyond the rest of the world is the result of applying business and marketing knowledge and tools that breeds success, the medical profession continues to disregard the one essential element necessary for medical practice business success--a business education. The cause is obvious.
The critical elements of medical practice success are not complicated to learn, nor are they difficult to implement into your medical practice business. The essential ingredients of business are things you participate in every time you buy something. The reason you buy something is because of the marketing efforts enticing you to pull out your wallet or credit card.
Several times a day you are directly involved in the processes of business and marketing in one way or another. It is uncomplicated enough that billions of people in the world each day experience the processes and all know what they are and how to use them to your advantage.
There are very few simple requirements that enable physicians to use these business and marketing processes to make all the income they ever want or need, if you are willing to look through my medical business teaching website and find exactly how to use each easy process every day in your medical practice business management. You will never regret doing that. The website is only one in the world today that has the answers for you all in one place.
Requirements for maximizing your medical practice income
1. Good knowledge of medical practice management
2. Having the energy for continuous medical practice marketing
3. Medical practice business planning is important.
4. Marketing for physicians and their office staff is a winning set up.
5. Learn what makes a medical practice business successful.
6. Your medical practice business system is essential.
7. Bothe practice marketing and physician marketing is rewarding.
8. Business success is the objective of all physicians in private
medical practice.
9. My business website—www.marketingamedicalpractice.com
10. Medical practice business planning ignites the process
The cure is obvious. The results are obvious. But no one is doing anything about it. Our medical profession deserves better.
----Professional Probe----
"Say what you like about creative potential,
but when you find yourself spontaneously involved
in treating or surgically managing medical problems
that you create a new process and do it automatically
on the spot without much thought, you have just
experienced your creative potential that you
will never forget. It happens most often while
doing a surgical procedure and come up against a
medical situation that's not in the books or in your
memory banks to rely on."
Articles©2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #118, 3-16-22
