“I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job.
Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs
that are too small for our spirit and abilities”
---Nora Watson
For physicians who change careers, it's most often the result of failure to recognize the real origin of their medical practice financial frustration. If physicians don’t recognize it, they can’t do
anything about it. And the cause will continue to follow them.
The inciting stimulus for making a decision to change careers most often originates from some form of insult to their personal integrity so strongly held in the mind that one becomes incapable of using common sense and logic. It’s exacerbated by their inability to define what’s really
going wrong.
As a result, the consequences, disadvantages, lifestyle changes, family commitments, and personal goals resulting from such a move, may become the least of concerns. You just “know” you have to do it because you see no way out of the dilemma. You don’t see it because you haven’t been told or have learned about the factors that will solve the real financial problem.
For example, for any physician to reach their highest potential in their medical practice management or business, they must have significant practice profitability that consistently expands both in patient flow and practice revenue.
If you don’t have a stable increasing practice income, you won’t be able to practice medicine efficiently. And I haven’t even mentioned the obligations you have to your family and their trust in your ability to support them.
What circumstance could a physician face that would be more devastating to their self-worth than to financially fail in medical practice and fail in their career? Even worse of a blow comes when you finally realize that the failure may be a result of your own creation.
If you don’t understand the implications that medical practice business is a business and you are the owner of that business, then who is responsible for managing that business and your
degree of success?
When a Physician knows how to manage a medical practice business profitably, the medical practice income soars, frustration is significantly removed, and there is no need to quit medical practice or consider changing careers because of lack of adequate income to provide for everything you
want to accomplish.
Physicians who have no medical business knowledge provided to them during their education find their medical practice business incomes dropping, patient numbers dropping, and practice survival right on the edge. Discouragement and frustration with the medical practice business starts from insufficient medical practice income in most cases. The same is true for any category of
business owner.
To practice without frustration and the threat of losing your medical practice, a doctor’s responsibility goes well beyond medical practice management...
To reach the highest level of success and offer your optimal medical expertise to your patients, you must follow the time-proven medical practice business principles
From college through medical school and beyond we are committed to reaching the goals we have envisioned. When someone throws a monkey wrench into the works later in medical practice, you suddenly discover there’s another whole world of business education you lack and need.
That factor becomes evident when one pays attention to the large numbers of medical doctors who are changing careers, limiting practices, moving to new locations, and are screaming with frustration. Surveys by the AMA reveal that well over 65% of physicians are seriously frustrated with medical practice... but they don’t reveal why.
You will never convince me that the attrition of medical doctors today is not caused primarily by lack of income. Do you ever hear complaints from wealthy physicians about lack of patients, increasing frustration concerning medical practice business issues or changing their careers?
I believe if you take any physician today and give him or her the medical business tools to implement into their medical practice business, that every physician will not only triple their income in a year, but also have a business machine that continues to build their practices exactly like all other successful businesses have done everywhere.
If your ambition from the beginning was just to help cure illness and treat disease and trauma, you must have by now had a resounding revelation about the actual live practice of medicine.
For those physicians in general practice who are complaining about no patients, poor income, and a lifestyle not of their choosing, it must be a profound wake-up call for them to find out about the critical disadvantage resulting from the lack of business knowledge.
Most important is that all physicians have the opportunity to implement the time proven business strategies into their medical practices if they learn what to do. There are business models that fit every physician and every medical practice because they can be custom fit to that practice.
You may recall that no one during your premed college program suggested that you should take business or marketing courses... as they have an obligation to do.
Additionally, remember that all through your medical school curriculum you were never taught anything about medical practice business management or about medical practice marketing, let alone did anyone ever even mention the critical need for business strategies or knowledge... nor do they ever intend to.
Sure, if you were smart enough to get into medical school, then you were smart enough to know yourself that you had a reason to know about business principles... so the ignorant idea goes.
Little did you know that it was your responsibility to recognize you would need a business education and that you would need that education before starting private medical practice. Yep, no one told you that in pre-med. No one mentioned that in medical school. So how could any student know that a business education was valuable and extremely important to your medical career unless
you were told?
The other reason you missed out on your responsibility to already know the need for a business education, is because of the existence of the universal medical school education myth that "Medical Doctors do not have to have a business education to practice medicine."
Now you ask, "Why would the academics of medical education ever decide to stick to the old mythical tradition and belief fostered in the 1800s and for the last century and never update the concept to correlate with the economic and business standards of modern America?" All medical schools stand behind that tradition and myth even today--why?
The fact that they never updated the concept is unacceptable. More importantly, the persistence of that concept/myth has been slowly destroying the medical profession for over a century and the academics take no responsibility for providing a business education for medical students
even today.
So if you quit medical practice and look for a non-medical job today you will face the problem of being business ignorant while applying for a job. You will be the last one on the list for being hired as a result. Remember that most of the others who are applying for work have already been working in a real business environment that you never had an experience with, except for in your self manufactured business in your medical practice.
Your medical business educational deficiency moves with you to your next job...
Like a dog that latches on to your pant leg, the lack of business knowledge follows you into your next career. It’s something most physicians who change careers even consider. If a physician starts a business of his own outside of the medical profession the same thing will happen there, if business education is lacking.
It's what happened to me. I retired in 1999--business ignorant. So, I decided to start an online business just like millions were doing for income. I set up two online businesses and both failed, again. That's when I discovered what I lacked in my medical career and profession and online--a formal business education.
Physicians may have changed careers because of the severe frustration with the medical profession, not realizing that the frustration was caused because they had no idea how to save their practice financially, and because they had no business knowledge to know how to solve the problem.
It is solvable, you know.
Taking the responsibility of self-educating yourself in business principles and marketing strategies always pays off. You can do it all yourself and don’t have to pay other experts to do it for you. Lots of medical doctors couldn’t afford to hire it done anyway.
Within a few months of reading the appropriate business books along with a bit of coaching you are perfectly capable of transforming your practice to a well oiled money machine... believe it or not.
My suspicion is that most of you refuse to believe that and is why you will continue struggling as you are now. You can't continue doing the same things over and over the same way, and expect the results to be any different than your have been getting.
You might be interested in knowing the latest news about training business professionals. It seems that professional football and other sport professionals are more important than medical doctors in the minds of our elite academic educators.
On November 3, 2011 an article in the Wall Street Journal elaborated on the recent creation of the STAR Program at George Washington University School of Business. The tragedy of professional athletes who earn millions of dollars fast, then for some reason or injury are forced out of sports and go broke... was just too pitiful for these elite business schools to let happen.
Several elite university business schools have similar programs for professional athletes to earn an MBA by part time education, home study, and direct instruction by the business school professors.
Then there are other professionals, like medical doctors, who certainly are in much more need of this type of business education, and are totally neglected as a educational priority. It even includes my alma mater at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business. The words I am thinking, about this outrageous issue, would not be appropriate for publication here.
Comment about who's responsible for any medical doctor's business education...
Anyone committed to the practice of medicine is also obliged to become knowledgeable in business for their own advantage as well as for providing the best medical services to your patients. Physicians are sent out into medical practice totally unprepared for business management.
When you think about it, it’s similar to sending a soldier into combat without any ammunition. Not only does it hamstring the success of every doctor who graduated from medical school, but continues to infect new grads in our 174 accredited medical schools in this country, let alone the other medical schools.
Not only does it prevent, or at least seriously interfere with, the highest potential any physician can reach in medical practice, but also creates the ultra structure for the disintegration of the medical profession as a whole. Read "The E-myth--Physician" to find out why.
What are you going to do about it… if anything? Maybe tell your medical school dean to shape up and do the right thing? At least you can improve your own medical practice without compromising your time and budget, if you choose. Ask me or any expert in marketing and business to help you.
My goal is to create a medical practice business program that any physician can use to learn business and marketing well enough, at any age or time in practice, at their own speed part time, to become a formidable medical practice warrior driving their practice to the levels that they have never even thought about or even considered there might be a way to get to.
Most physicians today that I know and speak with, lose their motivation after the first few years in practice, to make any effort to learn what they need to know about business to become highly successful and wealthy. And that, my friends, is an absolute tragedy that has to be overcome,
God willing.
"The cause of man's problem is lack of knowledge.
It does not stem from a shortage of information,
but rather from rejection of information."
----Hosea 4:6
----Professional Probe----
"Persistent frustration headaches caused by the
stresses of private medical practice today can be a
reason to quit medical practice."
"Frustration is a function of our expectations, and our expectations
are often a reflection of the social mirror rather
than our own values and priorities."
----Steve Covey
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #27 3-16-22
