Advanced Gynecology is my venture into private practice- an attempt to deliver care the way I believe that care should be given. The relationship between a doctor and patient is a sacred one, and one that has been pushed to the wayside in a current healthcare system that is flawed in so many ways.
When I went to medical school to become a doctor, I knew that I wanted to take care of people and to alleviate pain. It took a decade of study to accomplish the education necessary to do this, and I spent my twenties at the library and in the hospital. As it turned out- that was the easy part! No one really schools you about the sheer administrative burden involved with being a physician these days.
As I learned after I joined a large group practice after residency, your success in private practice is almost entirely dependent on seeing a lot of patients during your office hours. Physician schedules are packed to the hilt in an attempt to increase revenues in a healthcare climate that is paying doctors less, and (ironically enough) in an era of rising malpractice costs and overhead. The only way most docs can keep afloat is to see a lot of patients and hence increase their reimbursements from insurance companies.
It is a terrible system, because most doctors cannot legitimately address anyone's concerns in the 10 minutes that they are allotted to see a patient. I know I couldn't. As a result my 10 minutes with a patient would turn into 20 minutes, and my entire day would end up backlogged- all in an attempt to provide good care! Patients in turn end up just as frustrated, because they spend more time in the waiting room than with the doctor, and in today's economy, their time is just as valuable.
So what is the solution? More realistically, what kind of control do I have over trying to find a solution? Trying to change the rising costs of malpractice is a huge undertaking and a battle that doctors have been fighting for years. I'm not going to be able to fix that. Trying to increase the amount that insurance companies reimburse doctors is also virtually impossible, as these are large corporations whose primary goal is to make a profit, and they will decrease reimbursements to doctors as much they can for as long as they can. I'm not going to be able to fix that either.
The only sort of control I have as a physician is to try to decrease my overhead. Running a small business costs money (there are a lot of my patients who know that firsthand!) and costs can add up quickly. My goal- and venture- with Advanced Gynecology is to use as much technology as I can to decrease my office costs, which will in turn allow me to see less patients a day, which will let me take better care of them the way I went to medical school to do. Simple, right?
Welcome to the practice.
