I’ve always likened the job of a primary care physician to that of a chief executive officer of a small business. Family doctors manage the “business” of delivering and coordinating care for more than a thousand patients at an average cost, in the United States, of $8,500 per year: an $8 to $12 million business. Because the actions or inactions of the PCP impact the need for, and cost of, specialist and hospital care “downstream” from the primary care office, I think of this as “our” business.
Because of this, I subscribe to the Harvard Business Review. I figure doctors must have some degree of common business sense. And in my medical education, the slant of the business education I got was mostly relevant in the context of Socialized Medicine. I think that is helpful and useful in my practice in a medically underserved area, but there’s more to primary care than serving the underserved on a national level.
Reading the article “How CEOs Manage Time” in the current issue of HBR, I was struck by how light the “grueling” schedule of an American CEO is compared to that of an ordinary family practitioner: 9.7 hours of work each weekday and 3.9 hours on each weekend day.
Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.
