The theme of my last several posts has been the profit motive inherent in the medical system. Many parties appear to be responsible for this including industry and the physician’s lobby. I submit that the most responsible party is the consumer. The consumer is the one who demands the most advanced procedure, the best medicine, [...]

In the medical industry, there is a dirty word called “bundling.” Bundling is the combining of multiple procedure codes into a general substitution code that ignores procedure code modifiers. Essentially, it is one of the ways insurance companies figure out how to pay doctors less. Here is an example of how the mechanics of reimbursement [...]

A friend recently asked me whether it matters if a physician is board certified in his or her specialty. For those of you who don’t know, the medical profession is governed by both a national and state medical board. In order to practice medicine, physicians must have a state license and a national certificate showing [...]

Most of you are familiar with the headhunters of the financial world. Bankers and finance people are notorious for migrating from one firm to another. Typically, it is the headhunters that cold call and go after the best and brightest of any firm. It is a lucrative business based on the concept of a placement [...]

While I have posted previously on how various business models in the practice of medicine, there is one business that is actually quite profitable for a physician who does not want the cost or hassle of running a private solo, group, or managed healthcare type of medical practice. That is the job of being a [...]

I’ve mentioned several times before that doctors are not good businesspeople and that the current state of the health reimbursement system is a mess. One reason it is so messy is that it is all about business and not about care. In this country, the basic teaching of medicine is that “continuous care” is the [...]

In any small business, including running a physician’s office, the most valuable piece of your business is the real estate. Most people have heard the McDonald’s story of founder Ray Kroc, who believed that the most valuable aspect of McDonald’s was the real estate underneath each restaurant. For small business owners including physicians, getting a [...]

We’ve been talking a lot here about physicians and the business of running a medical practice. Lately, I have been seeing a growing number of physicians advertise on television. This makes me wonder - Should physicians advertise for their services?
In some circles many feel that it is unethical for physicians to advertise. It is sort [...]

I’ve posted twice now on the topic of the business of private practice medicine. Once about how being a solo practitioner is not a good business and a second post about the group practice model of medicine. There are other models and this time I will address the corporate partnership model of physician practice. This is [...]

My post about solo practice medicine brought along some interesting comments and trackbacks. In addition to traditional solo practice medicine, there are other models of medicine that are more economically efficient. One such model is the group model of medicine. In this model, several solo practitioners band together to form a “group” to share costs [...]