Practicing physicians have been extremely lucky over the last century to have survived financially in the health care system to the degree that they have today. Judging from my 25 years of medical practice research and 40 years of clinical medical practice experience, I have been watching the self-disintegration of most physicians’ value to the profession.
Your personal values become hostage to the Medical-Industrial Complex or Medical Deep State. Just the fact that all physicians over the last century have never been offered access to business education nor been alerted to the benefits of real business knowledge by any U.S. medical schools should enrage every physician—but it doesn’t.
Our government’s covert efforts to take command of our health care have almost succeeded. Did you notice that? What you may not have thought about is “it also includes medical school education and the profession.” Do you recognize that someone else will decide your medical school for you, the city or area where you will practice, your salary/income, and even the specialty you will be trained to do?
What you and I missed
The many actions that could have been implemented by our medical schools in the past to eliminate the present-day problems that all private medical practice physicians continue to struggle with now have been intentionally avoided by medical school administrators.
For some financial reasons, medical school scholars are determined to create small-business physicians and business-ignorant medical doctors. Recently, the requirements for medical school entrance applications have been reduced, which reduces the quality and value of physicians.
All of us in pre-med should have had a business education then—and didn’t. Pre-meds should have been stimulated to also begin doing due diligence about going to the right medical school for the right reasons. About 100% of pre-meds never do that. I didn’t because I expected that to happen sometime in med school—and I didn’t.
Most medical students never think about what happens after medical school. Who’s paying for you to start your private practice? You have no credit, no job, and can’t get loans easily. Thoughts of increasing educational debt wiped out all those considerations.
Your medical school does not care about you or your future medical practice outcomes. If they did, we all would have been offered or provided with a business education during medical school.
Later, most physicians discover that all their mental expectations for their future medical career outcomes are rarely fruitful. And it’s often too late to do much about losing your private practice for financial reasons.
Dealing with the business of medical practice
The conviction of about 50% of medical school students today seems to solve the big problem of money/income by securing employment positions right out of residency training. That kind of superficial thinking, however, disregards all the consequences that result from employment status for physicians—complete domination of every physician’s medical career and lifestyle.
Employment relieves worry about paying off educational debts and adds stability and security to lifestyles. In exchange for that, every highly trained and skilled physician soon discovers far more career restrictions that commonly handicap top physicians who desire to expand their skills and control their career destiny.
Such controlled restrictions on physicians often lead to dumping employment, which throws them back into the startup position all private practice physicians face right out of residency.
Employment escapes the need for physician business education and knowledge. Self-employment requires it—it is now all on you unless failing in private medical practice is acceptable.
The other 50% (about 500,000 physicians in practice today) of graduating medical students face the problems of starting practice without business education, knowledge, and money. It places every private practice physician at the same level as 5% of small commercial businesses that survive after five years (90% fail).
Those results all stem from the same cause—a lack of the business tools and knowledge that keep you out of financial quicksand.
Most medical students are brainwashed into believing that business education is not a requirement for the practice of medicine. But elite medical school scholars forget to tell you that all businesses are created to make money, which means the success of a business is totally dependent on enough income to maintain and support a medical practice, grow the business, and support family member obligations. So how does that work out for you?
Don’t you hate being told the facts that your arrogance despises?
Everyone is aware that a person or physician can’t do much in life or practice without money. Some physicians who have a good degree of intelligence and diligence see the value and benefits of business education. About 98% of physicians don’t. Why is there such a difference?
With all the financial problems that happen to most private practice physicians, it seems logical that most of them likely recognize, “I would probably be much better off in practice financially with a business education backup.” So, why don’t they storm the doors of those who teach business education to make their profession far more successful?
The fact is that no medical schools in the USA have ever provided a business education for medical students in the last century. So, physicians are pushed out of the education door of medical school and told to start small business practices without any knowledge of how to do it. At least we know that about 50% of medical doctors have creative skills enough to nudge a small practice into a business.
But, to stay in practice, grow the practice, maintain the practice, manage the business, and reach your highest potential in practice, retain the joy and satisfaction of your practice, increase your knowledge and skills on a regular basis, and eliminate 90% of the disabling problems we see today that are the result of business-ignorant physicians, it requires an academic business education—not an MBA or its equivalent.
The secret is that a physician does not have to learn everything about business education, management, and marketing, to reach the top level of income. Learn one page of management and one or two marketing strategies, and you will have opened the door to your success in private medical practice. You are far more intelligent and competent than you think. Business is easier to learn and integrate into practice than you are led to believe.
Curtis G. Graham is a physician.
