WHASSUP, DOC?

Dear Doctor –

When I wrote DOCTOR BUSINESS© (the book, a 5-star Amazon selection), it was six years before the 9/11 that changed the world. It was at a time when medical and surgical skills were measured by case experience and mortality numbers, not “patient volume.”

Having survived the struggle to be allowed to practice medicine gave you what many called a “license to steal.” 

In the mid-90s, and before that, where you did your internship and residency actually mattered. Public outcries for better bedside manners were surfacing more frequently. The extent of your family’s wholesomeness or dysfunctionality was a much-admired or maligned affair. Your vacations were flamboyant.

With whom you played golf on Fridays was a measure of your community prominence.

You stuck up for other doctors even when they were wrong (and even those you didn’t like). Because doctors then were doctors. And while everyone around you watched and listened to you, even when you least knew it, and whether they liked you or not, you were never disobeyed.

In short, you were God. 

But all that has changed. Now there’s computerized rigmarole, electronic record-keeping, patient emails and texting, Google and Bing. There’s supposed to be less, but it seems now there’s more paperwork.

Your liability insurance premiums could choke a horse. Society’s contentious mindset chews up your precious time (you have no inventory, right?) in legal tangles.

And the bumbling federal government hasn’t even a clue about how to run healthcare, or the need for nurturing free-market competition in order for healthcare to survive as a profession.

Your professional practice and what’s left of your personal life are so dictated by know-nothing politicians that there’s not much room to wiggle free, except onto a shrink’s couch or into an early grave.

                                                            

Let’s face reality.

Like professional sports, medicine has become big business. The difference is that professional athletes have agents to handle their business needs. You have you, and you never learned business.

Maybe you’re entrepreneurially-minded, but it’s highly unlikely that you ‘ve developed enough expertise in finance, marketing, human resources, management, and customer service in addition to medical skills to make the final cut as a businessperson. Yet you are a businessperson. You might hate it, but it’s who you have to be in order to survive as a doctor.

This means you need to rely on others who are probably not as reliable as you. (Medicine does, after all, teach reliability.)

Here’s the bottom line:

You can find qualified and proven lawyers and accountants and marketing (practice development) experts (and, no, these are not people who deliver subs and popcorn and ethnic luncheons to referring physician offices!), and you can find a good leadership manager type to be your office manager or practice administrator, but if your grasp of human resources and human relations and customer service isn’t working, none of the other business helper arrangements will work.

Concentrate your business learning on strengthening your communication skills.

You don’t need to run for office. You need to facilitate having others run your office for you.   

HELP SAVE THE ECONOMY . . . Support those

who endorse free market competition healthcare 

and job creation tax incentives for entrepreneurs! 

____________________________________ 

www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!