Are Doctors Terrible At Business?

You've heard it over and over again..."Doctors are terrible business people". I disagree.

Firstly, what do people mean when they say "businesspeople"? My definition is someone who runs a business and can sustain it profitably. Most docs I know who run their own practices (admittedly fewer and fewer as more gravitate to employed positions) do an admirable job keeping all the balls in the air, with minimal training, and seem to take home a paycheck every month.

Second, in addition to how successful physicians are as self-employed owners, the term "business person" also applies to physicians as entrepreneurs, leaders, and investors. Again, while lots of us suffered from the recent economic downturn with a hit to our pensions plans and investments, I haven't seen any evidence that docs did any worse than anyone else.

Finallly, there is considerable overlap between business skills and clinical skills-data acquisition and analysis, risk assessment, problem solving, interpersonal skills, accumulating "clinical judgement" i.e. learning from your mistakes, and lots of others. Docs inherently have business heads that overlap with their clinical heads.

People think doctors are lousy business people because practitioners place patient interests above the bottom line. The result is delivering services that don't generate a profit or inefficiencies in practice management. As more and more doctors pursue non-clinical interests, some for a profit, the unintended consequence and the good news will be a recognition of how good physicians actually are at business when that's the first priority. Unfortunately, it's also the bad news if you are looking for someone to manage your diabetes.

Arlen D. Meyers MD MBA is a professor and physician entrepreneur who blogs at Freelance MD.

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Physicians Social Contract & Healthcare

At the Medical Fusion Conference this last weekend I was fortunate enough to get to hear Dr. Arlen Meyers speak. (You can listen to Dr. Arlen Meyers interview on the Medical Spa MD Podcast as soon as we release it.)

Dr. Meyers is very aware of the general malaise that physicians practicing medicine in the US feel and published this on LinkeIn which I thought was right on.

I've just returned from several meetings on healthcare IT and non-clinical careers. While there is considerable angst, confusion and outright anger over what's going on in healthcare, there are several things to consider:

1. During periods of change there are enormous opportunities. The challenge is to position yourself to identify them and arm yourself with the skills, networks and experience to capitalize on them.

2. Physicians have a social contract with society. We are afforded licenses, privileges, societal considerations and prestige by those we treat. Be careful advocating severing those contracts or unilaterally altering the terms.

3. Restructuring of the healthcare system , if done right, will allow those interested to leverage their abilities to treat more patients with the same amount of effort.

4. Doctors in the US make more money than the large majority of people in the world. Placing individual financial interest over societal and patient interest is understandable from a individual perspective, but, often won't pass the political smell test.

5. While you might feel dejected, unappreciated and stripped of your control, keep in mind that the initials after your name and the domain expertise you have, still commands respect in the business community and is highly sought. 

There is a tremendous amount of disruption that's happening in healthcare. Physicians who recognize how to take advantage of this are going to be far ahead when the music stops.