Pearls & Pitfalls for Young Physicians
Practice management is challenging, and there are many things young physicians don’t know when they’re starting out. I spoke to Dr. Hailey Huddleston, a fourth-year resident at HSS, during a recent episode of HSS Presents: Young Physician Series. I shared some of my experience in building my practice, which I now share with my husband, Dr. Andreas Gomoll. Most doctors, even if you’re in a group, are expected to manage their practice, and management is not typically why we went into medicine.
Here are a few of the things I’ve learned:
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Develop a Niche Over Time: You don’t have to specialize immediately. Your practice will naturally evolve as you gain experience and treat more patients. By keeping good track of your patients and having them fill out some patient-reported outcomes before surgery, you can publish a lot of research even if you’re not at an academic institution.
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Build a Good Team: Hiring the right staff, such as PAs and athletic trainers, can help streamline patient care and improve efficiency. Your team can help manage tasks like post-op visits and MRI orders to free up your time for surgeries. One of the most important things is finding people you really like working with and who are friendly with patients. Having unfriendly staff is a pitfall that you need to look out for throughout your career.
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Communicate Effectively: Use tools like patient portals or office emails to ensure patients feel heard. If someone on my team is out sick and my husband and I are busy seeing patients all day, it’s important for my office staff to be able to return emails and let people know that we will get back to them.
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Learn Business Management: We don’t really learn the business side of medicine in medical school. Managing finances, staff, and contract negotiations is all crucial to running a successful practice. When you’re just starting out, make sure your first hire has knowledge and experience with running a practice because you can’t completely learn everything together.
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I shared a lot more of my experience in the podcast, which you can listen to on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.