"Our futures in medical practice is uncertain.
Learning to use our failures as experiences that
can launch us into far better lifetime situations
makes for more profitable private medical practices."
All physicians, dentists, and other professional healthcare providers need to see the potential future of medicine with fresh eyes. Economic changes and trends in healthcare sway with the breeze.
Keeping up with what's happening in the world around you, outside medical care, will give you
early clues. The most efficient way to follow the trends in medical care is not to rely on what you read and see published by those in the "think tanks" of healthcare.
In my mind the best way to judge where medical practice management is going, is by what patients expect from physicians and their medical practice management.
Over the past 70 years things have changed in the seller-buyer world from a medical profession business that told patients what they should do, to patients being the driving force for what happens in medical care in the future. Politics aside, patients are medically smart enough now to know good treatment from bad, good medical advice from bad, and good physicians from bad.
Patients are well aware of their power and dominance while seeking the best medical care.
Because of their influence on the kinds of medical care they prefer, it is urgently wise to do
what is possible in medical practice business planning to comply with what patients accept and demand from their physicians. If you don't catch on to that, they go elsewhere.
Medical practice competition, especially in urban areas, has become something to contend with.
In the1990s patient's wanted more time with their physicians. To get that, medical patients
became satisfied with healthcare from the mid-level healthcare providers over the traditional patient-physician interaction. We have witnessed that change in our medical practices.
Patients are demanding more medical information and education than ever before. It's a very good reason to be the one physician in your community to provide medical information handouts
for your patients--the ones you create yourself, not the ones created by medical organizations with slick colorful covers, sweet-lips of grandeur, and watered down information.
Patients want to know what you, their physician, thinks and knows about various medical issues, symptoms, and treatments. They trust you, not something provided by some writer with
unknown credibility.
Keep asking your patients what they feel about physicians, what they want in their medical care.
There isn't time in an eight minute session with their physician to find out.
In preparation for the future, you might want to consider these changes...
1. Employing mid-level providers:
Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants, Certified Nurse Midwives can spread your medical practice work load out, which results in your having more time to spend on more complicated medical patient issues, medical problems, and explanations. There is no doubt that these curious medical patients are a productive and profitable asset for any medical practice, if given enough recognition and attention to.
Many private practicing physicians already employ them and understand their value to the practice. Some great positive attributes are...
- Patients have much less waiting time to be seen... long waits to see the doctor is
probably the biggest complaint in medical care today. - Midlevel providers commonly spend more time with and give out more educational information to patients than physicians have time to do... a need patients have which is fulfilled.
- Midlevel providers communicate better with patients because they stay away from
lots of technical medical terms and explanations. - They show more sympathy and empathy than most physicians take the time for.
- This strategy converts a solo physician medical practice into a "team" medical practice.
2. Prepare for changes in your practice focus:
Ever wonder why you are hearing stories about cardiac surgeons who have lost their practices as a result of a massive increase in non-surgical procedures done by invasive cardiologists and radiologists that make bypass surgery almost unnecessary?
With the vast increase in sub-specialization in the USA, patients now ask for those specialists
that are highly focused on a narrow segment of medical care and treatment... even if their fees are much higher and health insurance coverage is nil.
It's a logical trend when you consider the vast amount of medical knowledge and information being added to the profession daily that makes it nearly impossible for any physician to keep up with.
I predict that my specialty will divide into Obstetrics and Gynecology as separate entities in the near future... women physicians dominating Obstetrics and men physicians dominating Gynecology.
I'm reminded of a comment one of our foreign OBG residents said to me the day she quit and
headed for Canada... "If there's anything I hate more than Obstetrics, it's gynecology."
You may have to stop doing parts of your present medical practice just to remain current in
your knowledge of the areas you want to continue with.
3. Move your medical practice:
This would be the perfect time, before the national healthcare law (after all the persistent new readjustments have been made, let's say) become rigid and prevent you from moving your practice to a much more profitable area of the country, or area of your own city.
If you've had a good taste of your practice income flow, patient flow, and future potential for growth where you have been practicing up to now and find it disappointing, it would be smarter to move your practice to an area you may already be thinking about right now.
To add to this idea, I have known of more than 6 OBGs who moved into and shortly left our area over my 18 years of private medical practice in my area. That doesn't include the 10 to 20 other specialists that have come and gone in our city, of over 200,000 population. Spreading that over all of the larger cities in the USA, adds up to a significant number of physicians moving their private medical practices elsewhere.
One of the problems that healthcare faces today is the relatively large numbers of medical doctors who move each year, by AMA surveys. The 15% of physicians that move around creates a gap in medical care and patient access to medical care.
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the healthcare law and our government takeover of healthcare eventually will prohibit physicians from moving around from place to place... pick a spot and then are forced to practice there forever, regardless of the financial and practice problems you have to tolerate. Enough due diligence before choosing your spot to practice will eliminate that
discouraging consequence.
According to the most credible economists, demographic research is showing that the most profitable practice areas in the future in our nation will be in the Midwest of our country where living costs have always been less than in coastal areas. Studies also show that settling in towns over 200,000 people and that have a college or university there provides for the long term family satisfaction relating to educational and cultural advantages.
4. Investment income advantages:
Creation of physician owned Outpatient Surgery Centers have often been a good investment, especially in rural areas. Independent physicians caught on to that investment opportunity years before hospitals thought about such a profitable venture. Now hospitals have purchased or built their own surgicenters to even out the competition from private surgicenters.
Hospitals, however, have discovered that their own surgicenters must be in, or very near, the hospital to remain a viable profitable investment for them. This same competitive pattern holds true for medical office buildings--private verses hospital ownership.
Medical labs in rural areas are a great advantage to medical patients and the physicians that own them. Even local physical therapy businesses continue to be good investments.
Many commercial and industrial businesses are moving outside of big cities for financial or demographic reasons. Their employees move into the area closeby, which increases medical patient resources for rural physicians. Physicians have to be well aware of the possibility of large businesses moving out of the area and the subsequent loss of their medical patient load.
Physicians have to be continuously engaged with what is happening in their surrounding communities, whether they are growing or not, whether people are moving away or out of the state in greater numbers such as has been happening in California over the last decade. Diligent physicians discover these problem areas of the population and avoid starting their medical practices in such areas.
And it is a good reason why medical students and those in specialty training need to start searching for a predictably high volume potential of medical patient areas to start their practice in more than a year ahead of time.
5. Medical practices must continue to grow for the length of a physicians medical career:
Medical patient attrition is every private practice physician's nightmare. That only happens as a result of either a physician's business ignorance or because of a lack of medical practice management--usually a part of both issues.
Requirements for maximizing your medical practice income...
- Good knowledge of medical practice management
- Having the energy for medical practice marketing
- Medical practice business planning is important.
- Marketing for physicians and their office staff is a winning set up.
- Learn what makes a medical practice business successful.
- Your medical practice business system is essential.
- Both practice marketing and physician marketing is rewarding.
- Business success is the objective of all physicians in private medical practice.
- My teaching website--www.marketingamedicalpractice.com
Comment:
Spend more time thinking about these things and others that come to mind. Make some early decisions now that will affect your medical and personal lifestyle later no matter what else happens in this country.
"Nobody except a baby in wet diapers really welcomes change"
----Professional Probe----
"When our medical practices are over and done,
we always have this visual picture in our minds
that confirms to us that we have run the race with
dignity while crossing the finish line, knowing
that we are each unique, supremely dedicated,
and satisfied that we have earned the success we have."
------
"And we should consider all of the other ways we
have to continue to use our skills and medical
knowledge beyond retirement for the benefit of
our nation in some way. Retirement does not give
us the right to waste our knowledge that took us
a long time, money, and much effort to accumulate.
Thanking our Creator for letting us use the skills and
talents He gifted us with, should likely put us
in good standing"
Articles©2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #149, 3-16-22
