"The supreme tragedy that physicians rarely
ever consider essential is that of seeking
financial help before they are in financial
quicksand with their medical practice's
persistent decreasing income."
Why do they do that? The reason for nearly all such incidences is what all business experts have been trying to inform physicians about for decades, but they don't listen nor believe when told.
The reason is that physicians for over a century have never been made aware by the medical school education community and scholars of the absolute need for all physicians to have a formal
business education.
Reasons why physicians continue to react the way they do... tradition of medical practice authority...
- Medical Practice Business education and the advantages of it have never been considered part of the medical education system for reasons unknown. Graduates of medical schools continue to graduate from medical schools completely ignorant about business.
- Tradition says that investment grade physicians do not need to have a business education to practice good medicine--contrary to business principles, the changing economic system, and all business enterprise thinking. You might want to ask yourself, "Who's been packing my parachute?" Medical schools have been blinding the eyes of medical students for over a century about this issue.
- The majority of business experts in our country purposely avoid counseling or advising medical doctors concerning business and marketing adaptations to their medical practices.
Physicians commonly do not permit appointments with business experts. Most have been "tree huggers" since birth. Physicians either don't believe what they are told by business experts or listen to the expert's advice and rarely take any action to use the advice.
The predictable reason for physician's negative responses to the business experts is they have been ill-equipped for the battle of having to unexpectedly learn even more about the practice of medicine that no academic had ever clued them in about.
Like being a fundamental factor for medical career success in clinical private medical practice. The process of setting their shirttails on fire to obtain a business education has not yet become an acceptable addition to the tradition of medical education. - Because of the physician never being taught anything about the values and advantages of medical practice management using business and marketing strategies for their income, careers, and career success, 99% of physicians lack the ability to...
*****know how to measure whether their practice is growing
or not
*****inability to recognize the obvious signs of pending financial
failure in its early stages when recovery is possible
*****are overly arrogant in believing they are able to handle any
financial problems without any formal business knowledge
*****recognize that it is their own responsibility to obtain a
business education to run their medical practices profitably
and successfully--do premed and medical students not
understand that medical practice is a business and they
need to know how to manage it successfully once they
graduate from medical school?
*****understand that what they are told and therefore believe---
"that doctors do not need a business education to practice"---
the topic never introduced to medical students while in
medical school by any academic--is an absolute lie
perpetuated by all medical schools for the last century, for
unknown reasons that are never made clear to students.
*****understand that because of the lack of a business education
that should be the responsibility of every medical school to
provide, so that the surging of attrition of physicians, the
disintegration of private medical practice, the financial
professional poverty physicians in private clinical medical
practice face across our nation today can be prevented.
Additionally, the purposely withheld business education
which insures that physicians have the ability to earn an
income appropriate to their level of education and
scholarly attributes--which they do not have today--must
be added to the medical school curriculums.
Under the above listed circumstances, how is it possible that any physician in the future and in the private practice of medicine can ever hope to be able to pay for their kids to go to a good college or university, or ever hope to earn enough to fund a reasonable retirement plan.
And let alone be able to tolerate the incessant government restrictions and mandates that continue to be propagated by our government for the purpose of intentionally reducing private practice incomes to the point that medical doctors are unable to afford to remain in private practice and are forced to join government controlled medical facilities as employees.
As you might have guessed, the government's purpose above is really a final segment of our governments decades long plan to gain total control of our healthcare and even the medical profession itself. You have been seeing it happen slowly over decades and never recognized what the end game was?
No wonder American males have stopped applying to medical schools.
By clinging to old medical school traditions you have tattooed on your brain the almost complete disregard for the small business aspect of your medical practice which is key to your medical
practice success.
The hard facts about your medical practice business begin to surface when...
- Your practice income is dropping
(as it has been over the last decade).
- Your practice income is stagnant
(practice is not growing).
- Your retirement plan is harder to fund each year
(decrease in net income).
- You discover you can’t quite fund your kid’s education
(they need a job).
- Your med-school visions/expectations of medical practice benefits
have disappeared (thinking about a second job?).
And, as usual, when you read all these “maybe true” factors, you begin to think about what to do about them. It's then you come face to face with your excuses for the next hour. That is, if you are open-minded enough to take the point seriously. This is not put in front of you to criticize, intimidate, or chew on your arrogance.
It’s to get your attention on the critical problems facing every physician in private medical practice today. And, as I see it, they are the ever-increasing causes among doctors for early retirement from practice, changing careers, joining managed care medical groups, and becoming part-time doctors.
Why would anyone think that physicians have rigid minds, fixed thoughts about medical practice, or barriers against outside influences which could affect their practice? It's more widespread
than you think.
Just because medical doctors are tormented with, “Physicians are all poor business people,” or even outside references to, “I gave up trying to get in to see the doctor about non-medical business issues,” doesn’t mean these remarks have any sound basis.
These conscious or unconscious barriers (maybe…"mind-sets") to outside influence undermine your ability to earn the profits you deserve and worked damn hard to be able to earn. I have some ideas about why that happens and what you can do about it.
More in-depth details about what physicians are required to tolerate...
1. Negative Educational Input-- Since your college pre-med advisors and medical school educators never mentioned the word, “small business” in your training, you were brainwashed into thinking that managing a small business (called medical practice) wasn’t important to your profession
and career.
The myth..."You can have a successful medical practice without business knowledge or education like physicians have been doing for years in our country."
If your idea of practice success is to simply have enough money to get along pretty well living in the lower levels of middle-class life and You manage to do the necessary things for your family, then your practice is certainly a success of minor consequence. And that mediocre lifestyle can be attained without any business training at all…nor significant practice marketing knowledge.
The tragedy of that way of thinking for physicians, has been and always will be an element of conventional thinking with no safety zone. It has been aptly applied to, "handled like dynamite in an old car on a bumpy dirt road."
Financially and success-wise, one disrupting event in medical practice management or medical practice business planning can result in total loss of your career because of no solid backup that a business education would have prevented or alleviated promptly.
That’s the common thinking of physicians today in private medical practice that I speak with, and was the thinking of my practice physician associates for all those years we practiced together—including me! Have you ever heard the saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” without understanding its meaning? Then you thought, “it doesn’t apply to me.”
Business people trained in business principles laugh at physicians, their ignorance of business strategies, and their attitudes that they can be successful in a business sense without knowing all that small business owners know.
The illusive problem is that every physician throughout their career in private medical practice leaves at least one million dollars on the table without being aware of it. That’s why they laugh... probably also feel sorry for us.
Business people earn on average much more than most doctors earn because they understand what it takes to have a successful small business in a true sense of the term. If you want to understand what 95% of doctors need to know, read Michael Gerber’s book, “The E-Myth: Physician” and it will all make sense.
2. Covert Brainwashing...
The second big reason physicians (with the exception of plastic surgeons) are the last of all professionals to “get it” is the unbendable belief in the dogma of medical school tradition. What it means is; just because every doctor in America is seemingly “successful” without ever knowing a proper business way to manage a medical practice small business, you naturally assume it’s not necessary for you either.
When you had it in your head that your medical educators thought it wasn’t necessary (because they never taught business principles to you) you felt bound to the traditional common thought it just wasn’t important. And, now you’re held hostage to that belief—to your detriment.
It’s like you have no mind of your own to make your own decision about “how” successful you want your medical practice to be. And, that brings you right down to determining what you believe to be important in your life and medical practice... also what success really means to you.
Common sense should rule here. You know you are really running a business of some type because you are somehow earning money. If you practice medicine without a business, it’s called free medical care. It would seem prudent to do everything needed to make that business thrive... but, most physicians won’t.
3. Intentional Personal Barriers--The third, yet more arcane, reason physicians never awaken to the truth is that you establish barriers, string barbed wire fences, strap claymore mines to the trees outside your office door, and have rigid office rules of privacy you beat into your staff that Paul Bunyan and his ax couldn’t chop through.
Don’t kid me; I know the truth because I did all those things myself, as well as all the doctors I worked with. I still wonder why we did that. Now I know.
You hide from the very people who can help you, like marketing consultants, business advisors (hopefully not your CPA or Practice Attorney), and other business experts. I know the rationalization—you just don’t have the time (means losing money) to spend talking to them.
You have no real idea of what you can do with your practice, your income, and your lifestyle if you would learn business strategies and principles, and apply them to your “somewhat successful”
medical practice.
4. Disruption Of Your Comfort Zone
The fourth set of reasons for your hesitation at altering your medical practice to improve it in outstanding ways is a matter of fear and pride. Inertia is always a part of it. Even that is often the result of fear of change, fear of insecurity, fear of failure, fear of admitting to yourself that you could do better or that it's even possible to do better, fear of taking acceptable risks,
among others.
We all have those same fears to one degree or another. That’s where business knowledge enables you to make the right decision. No risk, no gain, it's an inside job.
What you can do to overcome your barriers, fixations, and fallible reasoning...
Michael Gerber said it. And I believe it (paraphrasing him); “Only by developing an office business system using known effective business principles where you (the physician) control it all, will any physician ever reach their ultimate potential for achieving maximum practice value to their patients, maximum talents and skills which improve the quality of your practice, and maximum practice income which will fulfill all expectations you have for practicing medicine.”
Homework--Read the book. THE E-MYTH: PHYSICIAN, It’s short, easy to read, and packed with knowledge and advice.
“Your success depends mainly upon what you think of
yourself and whether you believe in yourself.
----William J.H. Boetcker
----Professional Probe----
"It takes a bit of courage and patience,
both of which you see here, to maintain
an aggressive stance for total control
of your own medical practice and career"
Since you feel like you haven't had a day off since third grade, and the fact that I've made your brain hurt with a raging calm, you need to overcome the trotted-out advice of being "mediocre jockey on a hell of a horse." You need to feed your "cash cow" and buy into what you don't want to.
We physicians are of many stripes, countless desires, and God given skills and talents. Who can be against us? Our arrogant attitudes seldom caters to a ceasefire. Our bank balances provoke us to uproot our previous beliefs and struggle for principled layers of medical practice freedom. We measure up to our own blend of high impact discretion and refuse to surrender to the pressure
of our economy.
Money prepares us for a soft existence, but we discover that the dream we hooked up on was quite different than reality where a plan is desirable. No matter what, we all contribute in some way to the universal medical knowledge library. We are in medical practice for the long haul, and the adrenalin rush of performing miracles and saving lives continue to recharge our batteries. The professor of harsh reality tells us that confidence breeds confidence and opportunities arise from failure, and yet we choose to work harder and longer to reach our ultimate career potential whether
we do it our not.
The one issue that has never been put to the text, and intrigues me the most about our medical profession, is that the physician industry in this nation has such undebatable political power that has been demonstrated throughout the Clovid Pandemic, and yet has never been put to use in an organized fashion well enough to enable survival of private medial practice and an independent medical profession.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #3, 3-16-22
