The EntreMD Podcast

I Created the National Private Practice Physicians Day - Here’s Why

August 12, 2024 • Dr. Una • Episode 431

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Our healthcare system is in a dire crisis. 

Insurance-based private practices feel this the most. Over the years, there's been a constant decline in the reimbursements private practices receive for the care they provide for their patients. So, revenue is decreasing, but the costs associated with running a private practice are increasing! 

This has caused many private practices to shut their doors, leaving a frightening number of patients without the care they need. That is why we at EntreMD have decided to secure a national day for all private practice physicians.

August 13th is now National Private Practice Physician Day! But what does this mean for private practice physicians, and what should you do on this day? 

Tune in to find out! 

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Key Takeaways: 

  • 00:00 Intro 
  • 00:50 The importance of private practices
  • 03:50 The challenges of running a private practice 
  • 08:05 Resources for physicians who run private practices 
  • 15:25 Your part in this
  • 19:13 Outro 

—

Additional Resources:


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Speaker 1:

Not only is you know in the EntreeMD world is August the Private Practice Physician Month, but we have actually gone ahead and secured a national day, okay, so August the 13th is National Private Practice Physicians Day. This is national, you can Google it okay, and this is a day when we honor the people who are in private practice doing the work. We support their work. We do all of that. Okay, hi docs, welcome to the EntreMD podcast, where it's all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, dr Imna. Things are about to change radically for the physician community and really for the healthcare space as a whole, and I want to invite you to be a huge part of what is happening.

Speaker 1:

August in the EntreeMD world, is the private Practice Physician Month. This is the month where we do a lot to support private practices, and you may be listening to this and you do not run a private practice, nor do you have any interest as far as that goes, but you have huge parts of place. I want to challenge you. This is an episode to listen to. This is an episode to share with the people in your world because everything's about to change for private practice doctors all over the United States and I cannot wait to share that with you. Okay, now, a lot of my interest in what happens with private practice started. Of course, you know I have run a private practice for the last 14 years and you know like I learned so much in that process, so much of what we can do to make it work and all of those things. And you know I started working with Entremdi to support, you know, physicians, of course, who are running any kind of business but private practice as well, and challenging them like, okay, yes, they've told you you can't thrive, but you can For those who are starting. They told you can't break even till three years, but it doesn't have to be three years and all of these things.

Speaker 1:

But things took a turn for me when I read about Walmart closing 50 of its clinics 50 clinics. They just made this decision, we're going to shut 50 clinics down. And I remember thinking I said, oh, my goodness, if they shut 50 clinics down and each of those clinics had a panel of only a thousand patients, that's 50,000 patients who've been displaced, 50,000. And at the same time it's like, oh, cvs is closing this number in California, walgreens is closing this number, and so there are all these closures happening and I'm like what's going on with healthcare? How many people no longer have a doctor? It's so terrifying when you think about it.

Speaker 1:

And I said, well, the work that we do is even more important because we need private practices to thrive so that they can take care of the patients, so they can expand their capacity to take care of more patients. For people to see. Oh my goodness, private practice is a model that works so other people can come. Capacity to take care of more patients for people to see oh my goodness, private practice is a model that works. So other people can come in to take care of patients. Because this is the deal. On an individual level, yes, we need our private practices to work, but as a country, we need our private practices to work and we need to support private practice doctors everywhere. Okay, so we are in a time where less than 50% of private practices are owned by physicians, and physicians are the ones who are going to stick it out. They're the ones who are going to do the work, they're the ones who are going to put patients first, and so, as far as I'm concerned, we need a lot more private practices, not only thriving but coming in, you know, to take their place and all of that. So this is the reason why we declared August is, you know, to take their place and all of that. So this is the reason why we declared August is, you know, private practice physicians month, right, and I'll talk a little bit more about that.

Speaker 1:

But you know what really are the what's the issue like to start with, what's the issue? The issue is that you know, in the climate that we are in, it is hard for a lot of people to sustain a private practice, to make it profitable and all of those things. And you may be in a point where you're like, no, that's not quite the challenge that I'm having, but I want you to just lean in, lean in and work with me here, right? What is the reason why we have all these economic challenges? Well, one is that you know, most insurance practices are insurance-based private practices. They're being paid by insurance companies and stuff like that, and over the years, there's been a constant decline in the amount of reimbursements that private practices are getting for the care that they provide for their patients. That's on one side. So the revenue is decreasing, if you will, and at the same time the cost of the delivery of services like year to year that goes up anyway. Covid made that an exponential increase and it's just continued from there.

Speaker 1:

After COVID we had the great resignation. With the great resignation, the cost of hiring great staff went up and all of that. So all of this is going up while the reimbursements are going down. And then you have the administrative burdens. Oh my goodness, it's one thing after the other that changes every two seconds, right, and so there are challenges.

Speaker 1:

I'm not saying there are no challenges. Of course there are challenges. What I am saying is that we can thrive in the midst of these challenges. So what these challenges do is they set a stage where, for the doctors on an individual level, there's financial instability. Right, there are many doctors who are like, okay, how am I going to make payroll? I had to go into my savings or go into our rainy day fund to go take care of payroll for this week. And there are doctors who have taken up second jobs, like a whole other job, so they can pay the bills of their practices.

Speaker 1:

Now you see why we are so almost fanatical about supporting docs because we're like no, you are the people who healthcare is relying on to a large extent and we need you to be okay, right. And so there's the financial insecurity there, there's the burnout, because there's so much more to do, maybe with less hands, maybe with you know it's less efficient. So, because there's so much more to do, maybe with less hands, maybe with you know it's less efficient, so it's just so much more to do. And so there are doctors who are like yeah, my practice is a multimillion dollar practice, but I want to throw the whole thing away, right, because of the level of burnout. And you might say, dr Una, you're usually a lot more optimistic than this what's going on? I'm coming, I'm coming, just hang on, okay.

Speaker 1:

And and a lot of times when this is not you know, you know it's not that nothing is done about it the practices go on to fail, right and and so, on the individual side, you know this is a problem for the patients. You know, when you have a practice that you know is not sustained, or a practice that goes out of business, that represents real humans who don't have a doctor, this represents real humans that you know don't have access to care anymore. Think about the 80-year-old who's hypertensive, think about the you know four-month-old that is waiting two months, six months, to get shots, like think of all these things, right. And then, on a community level, I mean, for every private practice that goes out of business, you're talking about, you know thousands of people who no longer have access to care, depending on the size of the business. You were talking tens of thousands of people, and there are a lot of.

Speaker 1:

You know big players who came into this space you know whether that's private equity or like your CVSs or your Walmarts and things like that and when they decide we're not doing this clinic anymore, it is such a challenge because we don't have enough private practices, or we do not have private practices with capacity, or we don't have private practices that are profitable enough to take on. You know the patients who are displaced. So this is a huge problem, okay, and you may say, yeah, thank goodness, that's why I'm not private practice. No, this is bigger than that, right, because you are going to need a doctor, your family members are going to need doctors, your friends are going to need doctors. We need the doctors to be okay.

Speaker 1:

Now, over the last five years, I have had the privilege of working with doctors who are building businesses, including doctors who are building private practices. We have had the privilege of working with doctors who started off as employees and now are running very successful multimillion dollar practices. And what we want to do for the month of August, the entire month is really to bring a high level of support to private practice doctors everywhere and this could be you, but this extends to your friends, this extends to your colleagues who are running practices, and all of that. I have run my private practice for the last 14 years and it has survived the pandemic, it has survived the great resignation, it continues to thrive, which I'm just so grateful for. But again, we have years and years and years. We have a lot of mileage as far as experience goes, and we want to share that.

Speaker 1:

So, like I said from the beginning, august is Private Practice Physicians Month, where we are really supporting the physicians who run private practices, and there are a number of things that we're doing to pull that off. And so the first thing is we are going live every day, every day, monday through Friday, to share simple concepts, simple concepts for physicians who own private practices, whether that is what kind of meetings to have with your biller, whether that looks like cash injection strategies for when things are slow, when it looks for how to win in a world where CVS and Walmart are not. We have one thing after the other, and it's all designed with one purpose to help you. Give you the strategies, give you the nuggets, give you the mindset shifts, give you the connections, give you the resources that you need to win in private practice. So that's the first thing we're doing.

Speaker 1:

The second thing we're doing is we have a book that is launching August 13th, so you know, and it is the Profitable Private Practice Playbook. Right, this book goes this is no fluff when I say no fluff, like zero fluff, but it goes into the seven ways private practice owners leave money on the table every single day and how to fix it. Right. It is such a game changer. In this example, in this book, I share an example of a fictitious character called Dr Ebony and showing very simple terms how, with these strategies, that she recouped, you know, like almost almost a million dollars, like money that she was just leaving on the table.

Speaker 1:

And I picked a pediatrician on purpose, because I know people are like oh, we're the lowest paid specialty. We're lowly pediatricians and all, which I would never describe myself as that and please don't ever describe yourself as that. You know, but I picked her so that you can take a look and you might say, oh, I don't believe that it can be 800,000 or whatever. Fine, what if it's 400,000? What if you could add 400,000 to your bottom line? What if you could add 300,000 to your bottom line, right? Okay, so we have this book release and this is a fantastic book. You can get a copy for yourself as the owner book. You can get a copy for yourself as the owner. You can get it for your office manager, your front desk lead, your biller, all of these things.

Speaker 1:

So your whole team is on the same page and we're like we are going to make this practice work from the very beginning, even when I you know like I was very ignorant of the challenges that were happening in private practice Not to say I was all that, it's just that I was not in that world, so I didn't know right. But I remember from the very first team member I had, I said this is a meeting I had with her. I said this is our mission statement Ivy League Pediatrics provides expert medical care with unparalleled customer service in a profitable way. Like profit is in my mission statement right From the get-go, because I was like I never want to look at you and say, oh, we can't make payroll this week. I never want to look at you and say, oh, we have to go out of business. Like one of my greatest responsibilities to you as a team member is to keep this practice profitable and one of the greatest responsibilities to my patients is to keep this practice profitable. Right, because if it's not profitable, I don't get to provide the expert medical care in an unparalleled way.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and so we talk a lot about, we talk about a lot of these things, a lot of these concepts in the book. Okay, and again, like I said, you want to get it for yourself, you want to get it for your team and all of those things, and you just get them on board and you say, listen, we are going to build a profitable practice. We are going to build a practice that is not going to be a statistic. We are going to build a practice that is sustainable and we will continue to serve more and more people and we are going to continue to. You know, like payroll is not going to be an issue. We're just not going to do that. We could probably do some bonuses, raises, and we'll have financial freedom, okay, okay.

Speaker 1:

So that's the second thing. So the first thing is the lives. The second thing is the book release. The third is you know, I'm very, very big on implementation. You can tell I don't want you to just read the book and you're like, oh wow, that was just so amazing. I want you to be able to implement.

Speaker 1:

So the third thing we did is we created an assessment. It's called the Private Practice Profitability Assessment and it's kind of it will walk you through. It's a very simple questionnaire. You can finish it in two to three minutes and it will kind of show you fine, yes, there are a number of things that we can fix. There are a number of opportunities we don't call them problems A lot of a number of opportunities. You have to change things in your private practice, but this is, this is your lowest hanging fruit. This is the best place that you can start from right and we give you those pointers. Very simple quiz. You can take this in, you know, in three minutes or less, and it will give you pointers. You can take it back to your team and you can say, okay, let's go make these changes, right. It kind of points like this is X, go make these changes.

Speaker 1:

And then the fourth thing we're doing is we're hosting a workshop on August the 24th and if you are like, wait, wait, if you're listening to the, after the time when this goes live and after August the 24th at the same link, you'll be able to get the replay on all of that. Okay, all right. So this is the deal. In that workshop, we're not coming to teach all the fluff or anything like that. We are coming to actually implement, like in real time. We're going to help you uncover okay, this is a deficiency, this is an opportunity that I have and then sit in real time and fix it or schedule, you know, when it's all delegated there in real time. So think about it like you know, like a CEO hour, where you just come to work on your practice, right, like you're not working in it, you're working on it, right. You hear that phrase all the time. Well, you know, work on your business, not just in your business. This gives you that opportunity to do that. Total game changer, complete game changer. Okay.

Speaker 1:

So these are four things we're doing in the month of August to make private practices better. So here's an announcement for you Not only is in the EntreeMD world is August the private practice physician month, but we have actually gone ahead and secured a national day. Okay, so August the 13th is national private practice physicians day. This is national, you can Google it, okay, and this is a day when we honor the people who are in private practice doing the work. We support their work. We do all of that, okay, so let me tell you what your part is, and this is your part, whether you are running a private practice or not. This is what we do for healthcare. You know, remember how we talk about physicians like we're the Calvary, there's no Calvary coming. This is how you take your role as the Calvary.

Speaker 1:

So, a number of things you're going to do. So, first, if you're in private practice, you're going to use all the resources. So you're going to take a look at the YouTube lives that we're doing. You're going to get your copy of the book. You're going to do the private practice assessment. You're going to attend the workshop so you can implement a work on your practice. You're going to use all of them. You can find all of these resources at entremdcom forward slash private practice book. So entremdcom forward slash private practice book. Everything is there. So you're going to use all of these resources.

Speaker 1:

The second thing you're going to do is you're going to share all of these resources with at least 10 private practice owners. Okay, now, you may say 10, that seems like a lot, but this is the deal. In the United States, there are 123 private practices alone, 123,000 private practices. Okay, that are primary care private practices. This does not include your dermatologist and your psychiatrist and all of these other people. And so there's so many practices, there's so much work to be done. So 10 is an itty bitty, bitty bitty number. Okay, like, yes, it's a number, but it's an itty bitty number compared to the problem we have to solve. So you share this with 10, 10 private practice owners in your world.

Speaker 1:

And then the third thing is you amplify private practice owners, like, especially on on the national private practice physician day, especially on the National Private Practice Physician Day, like, if you're listening to this right, when it's released, make a commitment, like I'm going to amplify them, I'm going to support them, I'm going to encourage them, whether you're a private practice owner or not. What does that look like? That looks like giving a Google review, right Like. Giving a Google review, especially you know, like this is a practice you've worked with and all this stuff. And or you can give a Google review of the physician themselves, right, like, even if you haven't worked with them, go to their practice website, leave a review. It could look like a video testimonial. So this could be you endorsing somebody who's in private practice and all that. Create a video, right, record it, tag them on it so they can share it to their assets or whatever. Or they can use it in their email lists or whatever. But amplify, make the burden. Just give them a good day. Give private practice owners everywhere a good day, right? And then the third thing is you could do a simple handwritten card, like, hey, we see what you're doing with your clinic, we see all the people you're serving, great job, we support you, we're here for you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, do that, right. So you're going to use all the resources, you're going to share all the resources with 10 doctors and you're going to amplify. You know some private practice owners. Okay, google review, video testimonial that you can tag them on simple thank you card, but do something to keep them in the fight.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you're in private practice, I do want to put this picture in front of you. I know that it's challenging and I'm so grateful that you haven't quit on it yet, and I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to go all in to make your practice profitable. We have provided resources If there are questions you have. After that, we have a live event. We have all of these things. We're here to support you so you can win.

Speaker 1:

Okay, like, go all in to make your private practice profitable. Yes, are we going to need to ultimately redesign and restructure and innovate? We will, but this is where we start from, right. This is where we start from. The next stage will be the whole redesign and the stage after that will be coming after the insurance companies, so that what is going on, like we will not accept that anymore, right, but to get there, we have to fix up our house first. Okay, so I'm rooting for you. I know it's not the easiest thing, but you got this and you have partners in EntreeMD. We're here to support you. Some of you listening you're already in the EntreeMD business. Glad you know. We're here to support you. Like I just want to challenge you. Don't give up. Stay in the fight, plan to win. Do the work. We are on our way, okay.

Speaker 1:

So, as you go, go be somebody who is a gift to the community of private practice owners.

Speaker 1:

Okay, go be a gift, share the resources with them, support them, do all of that. But a time is coming where the pendulum is going to swing in the opposite direction and most private practices are going to be owned by physician. Most thriving private practices are going to be owned by physicians. Most thriving private practices are going to be owned by physicians. A time is coming where private practices will look different. They will thrive better. We will have a different relationship with the insurance companies. All of that is coming. But it all starts from what we do in August. Right, it all starts from this moment. So go play your part, whether you own a practice or not, and share this episode oh my goodness with every doctor that you know. Like, hey, the groups that you're in and all of this stuff, just say, hey, go listen to this. Okay, a private practice revolution is underway and it all starts with what we do right now. So thank you for watching and I will see you on the next episode.