"Perceptive and creative minded physicians
often come up with ideas and thoughts
about how to improve or benefit healthcare,
medical school education, or medical practice
so that the medical profession can become
far more efficient and provide better
medical care."
After spending a few years during retirement searching for the real and identifiable reasons that literally thousands of physicians over the last century in our nation had been losing their private medical practices for financial reasons. I was one of those. At first I came up with nothing that would be widespread in our profession like that.
Because I happened to have been failing to succeed in a couple online businesses for some reason, I decided to learn more about business and marketing. I found a highly recommended business and marketing expert, Dan Kennedy, and joined his Inner Circle while I continued failing to succeed in my online businesses.
After my first year learning, reading, and studying the teachings of Dan Kennedy, one day while trying to come up with a plausible reason for financial failure of medical practice that had destroyed so many medical practices and affected so many physicians, while reviewing many medical school curriculums for an answer, I discovered the solution right there in front of me.
Further research indicated that every medical school in our country had never offered or provided a business education for medical students or physicians. That directly conflicted with the business and marketing information I had been learning. Physicians had been creating and managing their small medical practice businesses while having no knowledge or education in business and marketing. They were following the medical school dictate, "Physicians don't need a business education to
practice medicine."
Young physicians, like me, not only followed the dictate, but believed it.
Before 1850 it was true. After 1900, the issue that the world of all commercial and private businesses throughout the world learned, and that the medical education system forgot, avoided upgrading, remained ignorant of, or considered unnecessary, didn't.
The medical education system has done nothing to resolve the business education deficiency problem.
To survive all businesses must have business and marketing education and that includes medical practice business. It's universal knowledge to everyone except medical education scholars. Why is that? How does one challenge such an egregious and intentional tragedy?
My fresh understanding of how present practicing physicians felt about this issue...
I thought that I would start by asking an opinion from a medical school classmate and friend who went through med school with me, exposed to the same education benefits, would be a good place to bounce my ideas off of. His response was not unexpected.
His response was actually a profound confirmation of a medical school academic's views and knowledge level they have about the severe financial problems physicians in private practice are having. They bathe and wallow in a medical world quite distant from private practice reality. Therefore, they ignore it, refuse to believe it's as bad as it is, and find it extremely difficult to understand how it could be possible.
In addition, they are so occupied making sure that med students, residents, and others in medical training get what they think are the necessary basics of medical office business finances--using coding and billing, medical record upkeep and methods, using current technology to handle their business, the best practice computer software and hardware, management of overhead costs, and working with financial advisors.
That knowledge is useful to an medical office manager, not to the physician owner of the
medical practice unless he or she is solo practicing with no medical office staff, like psychiatrists.
He told me that most medical practice management education is left to the medical societies, specialty societies, and NOT medical schools. Beyond that are the courses physicians take from Conomikes Associates, The Practice Management Institute, and the American Academy of Medical Management. Strange, how much that sounds like the system used 80 or more years ago.
I never knew that that list of organizations ever taught the specific and important business and marketing education all physicians in private medical practice must have--they don't!!
It's quite clear to me that the only business education physicians are receiving today is fragmented, overlapping, and catch as catch can in disjointed one hour sessions and bursts of strategies and tactics.
Doesn't that seem like medical schools have simply dumped all of the physicians out into the business world without any small business success education whatsoever, and expect them to do well, be profitable, and happily donate millions of dollars back to their med schools? And they simply hope their graduates pay tribute back to the schools that shortchanged them to begin with. Who's kidding who?
They are insulting my intelligence and that of the physicians who recognize the truth when they see it.
Who are the practice management experts brought in from "outside" to teach doctors about medical practice management and practice marketing?
Have any of those experts practiced medicine? Have they learned about all that by books, college courses, and talking with doctors? Practice management is much more complicated and difficult to learn than listening to an hour lecture, or CD, presented by a marketing company that has a financial
prejudice motive.
What physicians need and can reliably use are the business systems appropriate for medical offices, details in depth of business management techniques, and be shown what works with medical practice, what marketing strategies are currently most beneficial, and why.
Those imported to teach doctors about medical practice business and marketing, are those who are least qualified to do so. I've been there at national medical meetings and listened to them. I don't go to them now because I can't tolerate the lousy quality of business being taught by those people who don't understand a physician's mindset.
Personally, I believe that having a doctor read the top 10 business and marketing books available today would be of much more value to their business education than a hundred slip-shod lectures
on the topics.
With a DVD or CD set of teaching products created with medical practice business in mind, at least a student or doctor would have the advantage of being able to go back to those over and over to refresh their minds. Someone needs to create those products who has a dominant and extensive knowledge of the business of medical practice.
What do I advise?
- For Practicing Physicians in private medical practice...
Because physicians won't temporarily quit practice for a year or two to obtain an on-campus MBA and because most physicians in medical practice today can never be coaxed into learning the truth about business and marketing, no help is available.
For the physicians who are open minded and have motivation and desire to learn and use business and medical practice marketing knowledge to elevate their income significantly while managing their medical practice business effectively, there are at least two reliable means of obtaining this education that is available and with small cost. Are you aware of how much an MBA degree costs?
A. You can obtain a necessary medical practice management, business and marketing, knowledge by reading the over 150 articles, each of which dwell on a separate aspect of business or marketing, on my teaching website. www.marketingamedicalpractice.com
B. If you buy the book I wrote and published, second edition, July 2021, you will find a listing of
114 books available on Amazon on business and marketing that I consider contain all of the information on business and marketing a physician needs to know for a super successful medical practice. Book title-- "THE WOUNDED PHYSICIAN PROJECT"
About 30 of those books contain most of the business and marketing knowledge you need.
Read one of those books each week and in 30 weeks you will know what I know. It will be an opportunity to obtain an academic education for about $20.00 per book--$600. Contact me for the list of the 30 or so books. - For Medical Students---both premed and medical school...
Because of the easier learning experience, and ease of availability online, I recommend that students go to the website and read the instructional articles.
----Professional Probe----
"Can you imagine stumbling on to
a page of fascinating information and
are learning far more than you
expected to know? Maybe this is
your bone-ified jackpot?
Articles©2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #145, 3-16-22
