Posts Tagged ‘private practice’
Why Private Practice Survives
“I’m surprised these kind of places are still open.” –Physician employed by World Class Medical Center
“And yet, here you are, bringing your mother in for a visit.” Technician checking in mother.
In my day job I am an ophthalmologist, an eye doctor who takes care of medical and surgical diseases of the eye. Our practice, SkyVision Centers, is an independent practice, what is often referred to as a “private practice”. As such we are neither connected nor beholden to either of the large organizations here in Cleveland, both of which have large ophthalmology practices with offices near us. The mother in question was originally seen on a Sunday in my office through an ER call for a relatively minor (but admittedly irritating) problem that had been ongoing for at least a week.
That is not a typo; an ophthalmologist saw a non-acute problem on a Sunday.
Now Dr. Daughter swears that she tried to get her Mom in to see a doctor all the previous week. “She” even called our office (more in a moment) and was told all of the doctors were booked. Strictly speaking, the staff member who answered the phone was absolutely correct in noting that our schedules were full (actually they were quite over-booked in the pre-Holiday rush), and that we would not be able to see a patient who had never been to our office. Dr. Daughter works for a massive health system that advertises all over town–on billboards, in print, on the radio and online–that anyone can get a same-day appointment with any kind of doctor in the system, including an eye doctor. In fact, we saw several dozen existing patients that week for same-day requested ER or urgent visits with the urgency determined by the patient, not our triage staff.
What’s my point? Dr. Daughter never made a single phone call. She had one of her staff members call on behalf of her mother; neither I nor my staff is responsive to proxy calls from staff. I know Dr. Daughter and much of her extended family. Over 25 years practicing in the same geographic area and populating the same physician panels she has sent me barely a handful of patients, even though I care for a substantial majority of that extended family. Despite that my staff would have moved Heaven and earth to find a spot for Mrs. Mom if Dr. Daughter had called either my office or me personally.
I know what you’re thinking: Mrs. Mom would get in because her daughter is a doctor. Nope. Not the case. I may have taken Dr. Daughter’s phone call for that reason, sure, but Mrs. Mom gets an on-demand ER visit despite it being our busiest time of the year because she is the family member of other existing patients. We treat family members as if they are already SkyVision patients; we just haven’t officially met them yet.
Now you’re thinking “what does this have to do with private practice?” Without meaning to be either too snarky or self-congratulatory, this is precisely why private practice continues to not only survive, but in many cases thrive. We have the privilege of putting our patients first. Really doing it. Same day urgent visits? No need to put it up on a billboard; we just answer the phone and say ‘yes’. Lest you think we are simply filling empty slots, or that we have open ER slots we leave in the schedule just in case, let me assure you that this couldn’t be further from the truth. We. Are. Booked.
Well, it must be that we are so small that the personal touch is easy. Surely if we were huge we couldn’t get away with this. Sorry, wrong again. A bunch of my buddies are orthopedic surgeons in a massive private group on our side of town. Like 15 docs massive, with all of the staff you’d expect to go along with that many doctors. Got an orthopedic emergency? You’re in. You may not get the exact doctor you’ve seen before on that first visit, but you won’t be shunted to either an ER or an office an hour away, either. The staff members making appointments for a particular office are right there, sitting up front. The same goes for the enormous Retina practice that spans 4 counties here in Northeast Ohio. Ditto for the tiny little 3-man primary care practice up the street from me, lest you think only specialists do this.
The private practice of medicine survives because the doctors go to work for their patients, and they don’t leave until the work is done. Private practice docs bend their own rules on behalf of those patients. Every day and every night. You know what happens when private practices are acquired by massive medical groups like the two 800 lb. gorillas in Cleveland? All of those rules get made by people who don’t really take care of patients at all, and they never bend a single rule ever. Those former private practice doctors become shift workers beholden to an institution, no longer working for their patients at all.
That family doctor or specialist who was routinely asked on a daily basis if someone could be squeezed in is not only no longer asked, she doesn’t even know the question was there in the first place. Everything is handled by the institution’s call center, somewhere off in a lower rent district, with no sense of what is happening at that moment in the clinic. Your doctor might have a cancellation and a spot open to see your emergency. Indeed, if she’s been your doctor for a long time she would probably rather see you herself because that would make for better care. But there are now someone else’s rules to follow, efficiencies to achieve so that they can be touted, and institutional numbers to hit.
“I’m surprised these kind of places are still open.”
“And yet, here you are, bringing your mother in for a visit.”
On her way out, after impatiently waiting while her mother thanked me profusely for seeing her when she was uncomfortable, Dr. Daughter extolled the virtues of her employer. Fixed hours. Minimal to no evening or weekend call duty. A magnificent pension plan that vests rather quickly. I should join up, she said. She was sure that World Class Medical Center would love to have me.
I smiled and wished her, her Mom, and the extended family a Happy Holiday Season. As I turned, shaking my head a bit, my technician put her hand on my arm.
“If you did that, who would take care of her Mom?”
Doc or Trainer: Owning Your Own Job
We are starting to see some turnover among the OG CrossFit Affiliate owners. Some, like Skip, were in literally on the ground floor, and a successful Box rode them into the sunset (enjoy your retirement!). Others, like Steve and Kelly, have nearly 10 years into ownership as they approach both mid-career and mid-life. They turn over a highly successful business and take on the role of “Founder” (can’t wait to see what’s next for you!). Some owners have left the CrossFit fold and changed the name and structure of their gyms. There have certainly been some closings, typically folks who either didn’t really know what it was they were getting in to, or found that being the owner of a job is more than they bargained for.
As such, the successful CrossFit Affiliate is much like every other small business where the owner is also operator. My day job is like that: if I don’t show up for work no revenue is generated. A huge percentage of small businesses run just like this. What you own is not so much a business as it is owning your own job.
With all of the talk of exercise as medicine lately, it’s interesting to compare and contrast the megatrends at work in the fitness industry and medicine when it comes to practitioners. In medicine we are in the midst of what is nothing short of a diaspora with physicians leaving the private practice of medicine for employment in ever-larger organizations. It should be noted that this phenomenon is in direct response to government action. Men and women who once owned their job, with all of the responsibilities (payroll, rent, etc.) and freedoms (hours of operation, client experience, etc) now work is settings where process and protocol is dictated to them, and fidelity to the organization has primacy.
Thanks to CrossFit and the CrossFit Affiliate model, the megatrend in fitness is exactly the opposite. Trainers have been unleashed from the corporate environment where salesmanship is the most highly regarded skill, and put in charge of a job where outcomes drive the business. Affiliate owners are the new private practitioners of fitness, in charge of everything from programming to toilet paper.
A certain tension has always existed between large medical organizations and smaller private practices. It should come as no surprise that similar tensions exist between CrossFit and its Affiliates and large fitness businesses and their partners. Large organizations crave control and abhor independent competition. Indeed, for those behemoths the only thing worse than independent competitors is being shown up by them. You know, like getting better surgical outcomes or having clients who look like the crowd at the Games. Large organizations often turn to government to suppress this type of competition and make the megatrends flow their way.
There are several important points to be made from this comparison. First, of course, is that every Affiliate owner and every member at every Box should fight alongside HQ is this battle. Trainers get better with more experience, not with more certificates.
Trainers who own their jobs also own not only their outcomes but everything about the experience of their clients. Just like a private physician. I’m biased, of course, but this is well worth fighting for.
For those fortunate enough to train people for a living the reality is that you don’t, and likely never will, own a business. There are very few large CrossFit businesses. For every CrossFit NYC or CrossFit Eado there are 3 or 4 hundred boxes run primarily by the owner. What you own is your own job. You’ll need initiative, passion, and resilience. A thick skin is helpful, too, because you’ll get plenty of feedback on that job. With a little luck you, too, may one day leave behind something significant enough that there is someone there to carry on when you leave.
There’s some turnover in Affiliates. At the moment nothing like a trend exists. Owning your own job is not for the faint of heart, and some will find it not their cup of tea. Others, like the OG’s above, will leave for that next thing on the horizon. What mattered is that they had the opportunity to own a job and took it, creating something that will live after they have gone.
The best boss is the client (or patient) who chooses you. The chance to work for them is worth fighting for.
I’ll see you next week…
Going To Work
One of the strongest statements yet made in support of the private practice of medicine was made this morning at 8:00 AM, EST. I went to work.
What’s the big deal? Of course you went to work. You’ve got a job and today is a work day. Ah, Grasshopper, there’s the rub. I am a doctor in private practice. I don’t have a job, I own a job. I don’t report to any centralized HR department; there’s no single supervisor looking over my shoulder. Nope, I’m a practicing physician in a private practice specializing in eye care, and this morning there are some 60 patients who’ve scheduled appointments and a staff of 14 on their way in to the office, all of whom are depending on me going in. So even though I feel like a damp campfire long past its useful life, I came to work.
If all I had was a job I’d a stayed in bed.
The dirty little secret of private practice medicine is that market-based economics works on a micro basis. There’s payroll to meet and rent to pay. The mere perception that your patients will leave your practice if you don’t go to work drives the private practitioner to work even when she feels lousy. Even more than that, the absence of a corporate barrier between doctor and patient makes the private practice doc think twice before he takes that sick day, because each one of those patients belongs to him, and vice versa. The unfiltered connection is so personal that the private practice doc thinks about what Mrs. Pistolaclionne (bonus points if you name the movie) will say if he calls off sick.
The dirty little secret in large, corporate medical practices is that market-based economics work there, too. All that talk about how your “World Class Clinic” doctor isn’t paid by how much work he does? Nonsense. In fact, the amount of money generated by any individual doctor is even MORE closely monitored and includes stuff like how many tests and procedures get done on her patients even if she isn’t doing the work herself. That doc’s compensation is absolutely driven by how much revenue she is responsible for bringing into the institution.
It’s just that the corporate Doc doesn’t own a job, he simply has a job. He has no direct responsibility for the staff surrounding him or the bricks and mortar over his head. His compensation is driven by his corporate performance, and that compensation includes time off for vacation and for sickness. Leaving time on the table is the same as leaving money there. There’s no bonus for loyalty to the institution. Points aren’t accrued for attendance. Frankly there are no real points to be won for extraordinary customer satisfaction, only demerits for egregious behavior. Unused time off, like extending your hours or taking patient calls when it’s not your turn, is simply donating your services and talents to your primary constituent, your boss the institution.
We should all be very cautious about the trend toward fewer private practice doctors and more docs employed by ever-larger institutions. Continuity of care is more than simply an always available electronic chart, it’s also a relationship forged over time between two real, live people with skin in the game. The next time you see your private practice doc and she’s a little sniffly and hoarse, remember to give her a little pat on the back and a ‘thank you’. After all, she owns this job and could have stayed home today, but she knew you had an appointment.
She knows who she works for!