"Most physicians recognize that independent
medical practice is a business entity which
requires making enough income in the
business to keep the practice up and
running as well as enough to meet their
lifestyle and financial obligations to their
families. Yet over 98% of medical doctors
mistakenly choose not to learn the
business and marketing knowledge that
supports those personal objectives."
As long as physicians can quit private medical practice anytime they choose and get a job as an employee in some government controlled healthcare organization or government mandated medical facility, the issues of income will never impress
any of them.
Eventually when the available jobs and employment in healthcare facilities become rare, as it will be soon, then private medical practice may get more attention. Those jobs are already hard to find primarily because about half of all graduating medical students choose to become employees
on salary.
For non-specialists, the old general practitioners (GPs), jobs will likely continue to be available because there will be a continuous turnover of physicians leaving and coming into those jobs. For specialty physicians, however, job availability is now becoming more rare with time. The fact that GPs are merging with internal medical specialists has yet to be categorized, perhaps leaves confusion as to quality of care.
For specialists, it involves many more barriers to finding a job position. It means finding a job position that matches their choice of city or state, licensure, family desires, compatibility with peers, and being able to practice their specialty in the manner they prefer.
What is so obvious a problem is that there are many restrictions when practicing under an employer of any type. Some procedures you were trained to do and know how to do, won't be allowed. Some ideas about patient treatment and management you may have, may be forbidden. Certain medications are restricted from your prescribing them.
Forward thinking by physicians is commonly far short of adequate. Otherwise they might have made different decisions over time than they did. My experience in the military, Kaiser Permanente, and as a Hospitalist has solidified my mind about the huge disadvantages associated with being employed. Imagine leaving medical school all prepared to do great things in medical practice only to discover that you will only be permitted to do part of that expectation, because you do not control your income or your career.
What a shame it is to meet reality head-on only to discover that in medical practice things are not as they seemed to be, or are promoted to be.
Take the medical school teaching curriculums. These have been re-oriented to teaching medical students how to get medical jobs and to make decisions relative to spending their medical careers in employed positions. That should logically make all medical school applicants hesitant to continue into the profession. Yet they do, because they are easily kept ignorant about what lies ahead. Students are never told the truth about what's ahead for them in today's world or healthcare.
The process has become a form of brain-washing medical students while intentionally biasing them towards socialized medicine. The stimulation in that direction is aggressively promoted by medical schools as the ultimate platform for increasing healthcare to all citizens less expensively. The other stimulation for graduating medical students is the massive education debt that they have to start paying tomorrow.
Those factors tell me that the government has been planning to take full control of healthcare and then the medical profession itself soon... and they are well on the way for accomplishing that. Our government is slowly disintegrating private medical care as a way to financially push physicians out of private medical practice businesses, which has to be done in order to gain full control
of healthcare.
The greatest barrier to insuring that physicians income in private medical practice is appropriate to their elite professional status and education today, are the increasing mandates and fee restrictions that create poverty among physicians with no opportunity to defend themselves.
Do physicians have any powerful allies... actually NO. The AMA now advocates for the far left agenda. Has our US Congress passed a law putting caps on all jury verdicts in medical malpractice cases... NO. Do we have a union that can arrange a million person crowd on the Capital grounds to cheer in our favor... NO.
When 65+% of practicing physicians admit that they are seriously frustrated, are suffering with burnout, were never able to meet their own expectations for their medical careers, can't afford to send their kids to good colleges, can't make enough to fund a retirement plan, and are having to continue in medical practice and never retire, who can do anything about that. There is one way that I see that can cure most of those deficiencies.
The century-long animal that has been feeding on physicians is business ignorance. If medical schools were forced to provide an academic business education for all medical students it would rip a hole in the fabric of the medical profession that would change everything within the medical profession for the better, overnight. Unfortunately, there is no individual or group, or organization, or government entity that gives a damn about the medical profession, it seems.
If they did, what have they done to help the hundreds of physicians that have been losing their medical practices for financial reasons--for years.
Perhaps, the Tunnel to Towers project should target financially handicapped physicians as well.
It's similar to the issue of finishing the southern border wall of our nation. Knowing that the billionaire list has increased dramatically in the last 10 years, about 2,600 of them according to Forbes Magazine, why hasn't there been one, only one, billionaire with the impetus to pay the fee to finish the border wall---maybe 5 to 10 billion?
In medicine, why hasn't there ever been one wealthy physician that had the ambition and influence to fund at least one medical school to provide a business education of one class of students, follow them for 20 years to see what the business education did for them... to prove that a business education is critical to the survival of private medical practice and even prevent our government from locking up the medical profession in a cage.
----Professional Probe----
"This is how I see private practice physicians
that are not provided a business
education by our medical schools."
Articles©2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #116, 3-16-22
