"The speed of healthcare has become necessitated by
private practice physicians for increasing income
and is a nationwide belief. See more patients, see
more income coming in. The consequences of that has
led to strong compromises of patient-doctor rapport,
no time for physicians to advise patients appropriately,
increase in errors of treatment, increase ultimately in
medical malpractice risk."
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is
probably the reason so few engage in it." ---Henry Ford
It took me a lot of years to learn how to think appropriately about an issue. Today at 85 I believe
I'm possibly the best thinker west of the Mississippi... or not. At least I practice the process
a lot more now than I used to.
I remember Mr. Rose and his son that I hired as carpenters to build another room on to our house.
He was referred to me by a friend along with very credible credentials. As he worked on the
foundation and wall construction, I noticed I would find him fairly often sitting on a pile of 2x4s
quietly pondering something. He wasn't on an hourly pay setup where I might have believed he
was wasting my time and money, but I was in a hurry to see the job finished.
So one evening he was still working when I arrived home, the perfect opportunity to ask him why he
spent a good deal of time sitting by himself quietly. I knew it wasn't a health problem by his
sturdiness and carefulness he used in his work. His answer was probably the first time in my life
that anyone had made me so enlightened about thinking. He told me that everyone in life should
take quiet time to do thinking about most anything.
His explanation to me indicated that he used thinking to make decisions about my room
construction, organize what should be done first, or next, and the reasons for it so that time would
not be wasted doing over all the mistakes that one fairly often made in construction.
It also avoided having to throw away a lot of good lumber and materials wasted in those blunders--let alone the increased cost of materials that resulted from that.
I realized he was trying to carefully get the job done faster and with less cost to me, thinking of me
and not himself, I suspect. The idea has remained in my mind for all these years. It brings to mind
how much time physicians waste by not spending time thinking.
I remember all the times I had to wait in the surgery doctor's lounge for my case to begin because of delays by the cases ahead of me on the schedule. Actually, I never saw a doctor reading a medical book or journal, or medical practice management practice problems on the phones while waiting, including myself. Waiting sometimes was far more than an hour.
Operative cases scheduled in the operating rooms of hospitals have one unresolvable issue that will continue to aggravate most surgeons forever. The operative procedure time in the OR is important for many reasons. The diagnosis is not always accurate, complications during surgery are unexpected, finding more new problems found in the procedure that are unexpected, and how fast the surgeon does his surgery cases varies--ultimately leads to problem for the operating room teams as well as the surgeons awaiting to start their medical patient operative procedures.
The same was the case as I waited on a labor patient to progress along. That wait time often went for hours and hours, which some doctors used to go back to their offices to do work there. But, there are more important issues here. In such a busy and rapidly advancing world we take even less time for thinking through issues and problems, and therefore make more mistakes in our practices.
If you had asked me what was happening in the outside world in those years in practice, I doubt I
would have known. In the early 1970's I didn't see what was happening in medical practice like the
fact that managed-care had been approved by congress and was in full swing.
When I saw my good patients rapidly changing over to the HMOs, my income dropping, and having to sign hundreds of participation contracts with the HMOs, at lower fees, to keep at least some of my patients, I finally got serious about thinking where I was going and what I could do--late--but did it.
If I had taken time to think, and kept in touch with the happenings and news, I would have saved
myself a lot of grief. But, I was so busy seeing patients, the thought never entered my mind... a complete distraction by my "busyness."
"In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself."---Laurence Sterne
The same thing happened to me when suddenly all the medical malpractice insurance companies left California. If I had been thinking and watching, I would have seen this coming down the road.
Instead, I went "bare" for two years until the doctors finally started their own medical malpractice insurance organizations and got on board. I even thought of quitting OB at the time because of the inherent risk of the specialty.
Lesson: Any medical doctor that doesn't take quiet time thinking about the eventual effects of outside
changing events that can and will demand changes in how they practice, is likely to always be reacting to their environment instead of being proactive. Unfortunately, their destiny will be determined by
circumstances and events, not often enough by personal choice and control.
It's always interesting to me how we travel through premed, medical school, internship and
residency with the power of our discernment, diligence, and decision making, yet suddenly stop
using those attributes during private medical practice.
Your life as an employee means you will always be working for the rich, and all the rest is done for you by someone else, usually by someone who is not a physician and doesn't think like a physician.
And that is an absolute medical career tragedy that keeps trimming down our professional potential and capabilities, crippling your freedom to practice medicine the way you see fit, and that best accommodates our personal desires, satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness in our lives.
The other important reminder that you need to keep in mind consistently throughout your private medical practice business career are the most critical factors that directly effect your income, your career potential, and your ultimate satisfaction with what you do for your medical patients are as follows...
Requirements for maximizing your private 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 for direction
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 teaching website—www.marketingamedicalpractice.com
----Professional Probe----
"The process of accumulating money in private
medical practice is actually not the
result of seeing more patients in your
private medical practice. The accumulation of
income is far more the result of your medical
practice management and medical practice
marketing--avoiding the disasters we make when
we are business ignorant."
Articles©2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #135, 3-16-22
