"Most physicians have no grip on what's happening in the rest of the profession that, like quicksand, is financially dragging them all down rapidly to the point of looking for a different life that's tolerable."
Who's going to believe this? Physicians in their local community may know of a physician that quit his practice, but rarely do they find out the truth of the matter. The medical doctor likely didn't broadcast his problem beforehand. It isn't like 8 or 10 physicians in their town quit their practice and left town, which would have created concerns for everyone.
If you spread out the number of physicians that dropped out of private private medical practice across the nation, even though it may be in the hundreds a year, it would not be noticeable to other physicians. Besides, what busy physician trying to stay solvent themself would waste time researching how many there actually were?
The minority of physicians that are wealthy and practicing sure wouldn't care about what is happening to other physicians. It doesn't take long in private medical practice to discover that you are on your own, at least when it concerns your own medical practice practice management and medical practice business growth.
Patients and other citizens only care that you are available to help them with their healthcare. Face it. There's a world out there today that has no pity on physicians financial problems--hell, they're all wealthy, so why should we care, goes the thinking.
Unless some medical researcher, medical organization, or interested political entity decides to investigate the numbers of physicians losing their medical practices for financial reasons, Most all others, including physicians, have no idea as to how bad the problem is. One way to obtain that kind of information is to do a thorough search of every statistic about physicians financial problems that is published anywhere by anybody.
What recent research tells us is very worrisome...
At first look, healthcare's questionable financial standing has been especially frightening for and harmful to physicians across our country. It's not difficult to understand why. For the last century physicians have continuously battled financial problems--a long history of torment for them. Intelligent minds quickly surmise that it must have something to do with not having the business knowledge to make their practice profitable.
Isn't it strange, or even unbelievable, that the primary foundation for any profitable business, business education, not only never entered the minds of medical school scholars, but has been persistently avoided by all medical schools because they believed a business education was not necessary to practice medicine. I ask you, "How can such widespread ignorance about such an important issue escape the minds of highly intelligent people and leaders?"
"Most physicians have no grip on what's happening in the rest of the profession that, like quicksand, is financially dragging them all down rapidly to the point of looking for a different life that's tolerable."
Why should physicians worry?...
Definition of TRADITION--An authoritative belief that is regarded as a foundational necessity that must never be violated, ever.
A recent California Medical Association survey found that 64% of physicians said they urgently were in need of financial assistance, while 47% pressed for temporary housing. One physician said, "Doomsday! Scariest days and nights for all the staff, physicians, and patients. My family is at the edge due to potential Clovid-19 exposure, financial stress, and mental cloudiness."
It doesn't end there. Physicians employed by healthcare systems and facilities have suddenly found themselves without jobs when as many as 18 US hospitals had to close. Across the nation the number of hospitals that went out of business are estimated to be at least a hundred. And that doesn't include the number of layoffs of staff, or voluntary retirement during the Pandemic.
The financial situations of many physicians in the past rarely are known or made public except as background for criminal activities. In 2019, 43% of physicians in a private survey admitted they suffered financial losses as the result of poor investments (lack of investing knowledge most often), medical practice income restrictions, and other setbacks (like lack of knowledge about medical practice management).
A medical post graduate degree in no way guarantees success, appropriate income that matches one's intelligence and education level, number of patients treated daily in the office, nor ever reaching your maximum potential as a physician who practices medicine at any time in the future.
Those factors must be reconciled with each physicians desires and expectations. Suddenly recognizing, after five or ten years in medical practice, that your medical school expectations will never be accomplished is a profound disappointment especially to all those physicians today that suffer burnout, frustration, and anger at their situation.
FACT: Absolutely no physician would ever have to be facing these situations over the last seven or more decades, even today, if every physician had had an academic business education to support their expectations for their medical career.
Please--Please--pay attention to the following...
Starting right now today you are fully capable and intelligent enough to find, read, learn, know how to apply and use all of the business and marketing tools available today, to effectively double or triple your practice income over the next year.
I am willing to give you the list of the business and marketing books that I know will enable any physicians in private medical practice to avoid the many destructive activities that nearly all physicians who lose their medical practices for financial reasons, see too late.
My list is 111 business and marketing books---all of which are NOT written by college professors who teach from those books, but written by authors who are entrepreneurs, most of whom started with nothing, ran the gamut of winning and losing in both business and marketing, and are now sitting on millionaire row. They learned the tools and used them effectively and profitably.
You may be laughing at the thought that reading 111 rather thin books well under 300 pages for the most part, compared to the 250,000 books in the same category listed on Amazon Books, is overwhelming. Who said anything about reading all 111 of them?
My expertise was derived from these books over 10 years time. You have the opportunity to select the top 25 books you would like to read--the ones that I believe offer the greatest bang for the buck. The remaining books are resources that supplement your business and marketing knowledge as needed.
Book List source: My book published July 2021
"THE WOUNDED PHYSICIAN PROJECT" p. 302 -- 313
"If a businessman or businesswoman invested an hour
every day doing nothing but reading, thinking,
brainstorming, creating new and better way to
be of greater and more valued services to his
customers, money problems would melt away."
----Earl Nightingale
Is the result of remaining financially illiterate important enough for you to pass
it on to your children?
"The greatest mistake doctors make is simply not paying sufficient attention to their finances," says Jim Dahle, MD, an emergency room physician and author of "THE WHITE COAT INVESTOR." Money hasn't value unless you put it to work.
A 2017 study found that "medical residents and fellows had low financial literacy, investment-risk tolerance, high debt, and deficits in their financial preparedness." Actually, those factors are present in nearly all physicians in our nation.
Almost a third of respondents said they struggled to meet their monthly expenses, despite having a medium income around the national average. The researchers concluded that medical school students should undergo training in budgeting, estate planning, investing, and retirement planning.
Dr. Dahle argues that many physicians forgo saving accounts. Sanjiv Lakhia, MD, a psychiatrist with Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates, explains the challenge like this, "And once you get your first job as a practicing doc and you get your contract and your salary, there's an urge to ramp up your lifestyle real quick, whether it's a new, shiny car, big house, or what have you."
Dr. lakhia is obviously a salaried employee and has no true idea how much more of a problem finances are for private practice physicians, especially when the same is true of private
practice physicians.
Budgeting and retirement planning are the least of the financial problems when starting in private practice. For private practice physicians avoiding poverty rapidly becomes the fuel for recruiting new patients daily if possible. If the physician has made friendly visits to the medical doctors in the community beforehand, ones most likely to refer patients to you, then you have stumbled on to the most important source of new patients. Well known statistics show that about 60% of new patients are referred by other physicians.
So, if you haven't ever read my articles on referrals on this site, or haven't read the books on
referral marketing, how are you going to know how to set up the perfect referral program
for your practice?
Understanding that a private practice physician's source of income is from a continuous and increasing number of new patients knocking your door down to get in, you can't rely on referral volume alone to survive because referrals are coming in way too slow and much less often.
So, if you have been practicing for years and are in this circumstance only to notice that referrals are now few and far between, that new patients are more rare than ever, and that your income has stagnated or is dropping, you know something has to be done, or else. The quickest and simplest means to get the practice rolling in dough again is to read the book segment on post-card marketing, or the books on marketing,
Here we are one more time and with one more instance of financial problems that nearly all physicians across this country have no knowledge about how to fix the income loss, find a way to do that, and hope that your method works. When a medical practice marketing program is drowning in bills that it can't pay, who is it that tells you how to solve the problem? If you had the medical practice marketing knowledge, there would never be a problem with income.
You are not alone in this situation. Nearly all private practice physicians sooner or later face this same problem. Those doctors with a business education (obtained by business courses or by reading books on it) are able to see the problem early and fix it quickly. Those physicians who don't have that knowledge, or some access to it, (like marketing books) are on the way to losing their private medical practice businesses for financial reasons.
Comment--If and when you become knowledgeable, make sure you teach your kids all about it, and persistently, because their schools will not teach them what you now know.
A segment about investing (covered elsewhere on this site)
All money originates from one kind of business or another!
Physicians love to be able to tell friends and family that they are investing money and are doing well. Most do it for retirement funding or a legacy left for their family. It does not matter what kind of investing you are doing nor how long you have been at it. There are a few things everyone should know who wants to invest...
- You truly need to rely on a mentor, adviser, or expert in the field you are interested in, regardless of how many books you have read or courses in investing you have taken.
Reliable studies have shown that anyone who attempts to play the stock market using their own knowledge only--95% will lose all their money. - The stock market is stacked against the retail traders (you and me). It is not that you can't make money in the market, you just have to have the right person to guide you. Your best resource for those people are the online FINANCIAL PUBLISHERS iNDUSTRY. Go to Google online and use these keywords. You will find about 40 or 50 groups of registered and licensed stock brokers who have left Wall Street to help the little guys. Some are unreliable and some are fantastic and trustworthy. I've filtered them down to about 5 or 6 groups.
My #1 favorite is a group led by RobBooker.com
This group has about 10 members, each of which create various methods of investing in the market. For the most part the methods have names and they make each one available to members at a price ranging from $700 to $5000--Booker's group are the least expensive and highest programs are under $2000. They each have a specialty of the market that they like to teach and deal with in the stock market.
These programs are profitable about 8 out of 10 trades. They are boiler plated--the broker furnishes the stock symbol, how to order the trade, and then tells you when to get out of the trade--no studying or book reading unless you want to know more.
Trading plain stocks requires a long time to make much money so you have to start trading those at a much earlier age level.
Trading Options means that you can earn a great deal of money rather quickly so is appropriate for doctors like me at 84 years old who never made enough money in practice to fund a retirement plan. And now can.
If a physician starts these early in their practice, they are capable of making far more income from Options than from their medical practice. Unfortunately, I never had any idea that the stock market could provide such unbelievable earnings as a young doctor. I think that if I started with the market by 25, I would have accumulated a $million by 30, and might have quit medical practice. - Real Estate Investing was not my favorite. I found that I would almost be living in my car to make any money. This is one kind of investing that requires a great deal of time, real estate knowledge and reading, and studying the profitable investing alternatives. You can start with no money but you have to train you mouth about how to do it. You will always have to have an army of connections/people to rely on. If you are introverted, real estate is not for you.
Debt problems of physicians can be even worse than investment losses.
Physicians aren't immune to falling for false dreams and scams, like the doctor who sunk $25,000 in a marijuana farm that claimed to deliver 18% annual returns. Even an investment pitch for rubber horseshoes that captivated the whole doctor's lounge, left everyone with regrets and anger.
Physicians who responded to one private survey pointed to a slew of investment problems, from buying bunk stocks high and selling them low to failed startups, to risky trades in penny stocks, bitcoin, and day trading.
"The further you get away from traditional investments, such as certificates of deposit, stocks, bonds, and real estate, the greater the knowledge that's required," writes retired cardiologist Robert Doroghazi, MD, in The American Journal of Cardiology, "and the greater possibility for error."
Your wealth will rarely ever reconcile for the personal investment knowledge you lack or the height of risk you are willing to take emotionally. But it certainly makes you feel like it does, even if your investment loses $100,000 overnight.
A stressful financial problem that most newer physicians wish would disappear overnight is that of their accumulated educational debt. The average medical student from the class of 2019 owed $201,490 in loans. That's the cost of finally being allowed to don the short white jacket. According to the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) that debt was 2.5% higher than the
previous year.
Can you imagine what it's like to be overboard in debt, have no job, lack significant assets, and walk into the bank and ask for a loan to startup your independent medical practice. No wonder new physicians head for employed positions first, which is exactly what I did.
Farzon Nahvi, MD, an ER doctor in New York highlighted the problem when he 2 years ago discovered that he couldn't afford a home, thanks to his $3,000 monthly loan payments. After graduating with a $180,000 education debt, Dr. Nahvi was forced to ride a bike to work and eat free meals at the hospital. When you were a resident, did you ever eat leftover intact food off patients trays? When you're broke, you become desperate at times, right? don't tell me, I don't want to know.
Dr. Nahvi said, "Upon completing residency, the amount that I owed had increased to $188,000, and I couldn't even cover the accumulating interest on the debt. Applying for federal loan forgiveness or refinancing may not work unless one is able to refinance at a lower interest rate." And that usually leads to a longer time to pay it off."
These are the moments when one beats themself up for not picking a higher paying specialty--like orthopedics, dermatology, or cardiac surgery.
The one remaining factor that adds to all the above issues is when a Pandemic arrives, a tsunami hits, forest fires devastate thousands of acres and towns, floods damage towns and cities, or inflation runs prices up far beyond the ability of many to pay for. When patients are prevented from reaching doctor offices, doctors make no money.
It has been reported that 97% of private physicians practices lost money by April 2020 due to the pandemic, and nearly half had instituted furloughs for office staff, shortened office hours, less personal spending, and etc. These economic downturns and unexpected weather storms can quickly send a medical practice business into bankruptcy, unless they have prepared for such
events beforehand.
The problem is that physicians are so used to riding the cutting edge of their incomes that serious financial problems can become recurrent. The same factors affect the HMOs and government controlled medical facilities as well.
Comments...
In spite of all the widespread advice to physicians regarding what one should do about resolving financial problems, making more income, and determination at making medical practice management much better, the one fatal flaw that intertwines with the usual advice is that almost no one explains to physicians HOW to do it.
My belief is that the HOW to do what is advised is a result of the business and marketing ignorance of those offering advice. Common sense and a functioning mind tells us for over seven decades physicians have never been told nor provided with a business and marketing education. Based on that fact, it is highly likely that most of those offering advice are also business ignorant and have no credible "how to" advice to give.
Business experts do know, but they have avoided helping physicians that won't listen, or abide by their advice, and gave up on arrogant physicians. If only Dr. Dahle had thought to advise physicians that a business education is the perfect cure for any doctor's financial problems and that "taking an active interest in one's finances" is useless advice.
That's about the same thing as telling a medical student to go take out the patient's appendix, when the student hasn't even seen the surgery procedure done.
The guidelines that I advise my clients are the specific items that make a world of difference to any physician that has a desire to do the chores that produces the highest medical practice income and satisfaction such as...
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. Both 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.managementmedicalpracticebusinessandmarketing.com
----Professional Probe----
"It's become as bad as this, even worse
for some physicians such as those in
independent medical practice. And would never
have to happen if medical schools had provided
a business education for all medical students."
Articles©2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #91, 3-16-22
