How can it be that most doctors are living paycheck to paycheck? I know. It surprised me, too. But once you think about it, it all makes sense.
For many physicians, it feels like they can no longer practice in a way that lets them thrive. More and more, there’s an idea that the standard fee-for-service models of medicine are negatively impacting both doctors and patients. For instance, one of my friends works under a contract that limits her facetime with patients to six minutes. Neither of her nor her patients are happy about it, and it’s just one example of many. But things don’t have to be that way.
Many doctors are seeking alternatives to traditional medical practices. From adapting with direct primary care (DPC) and telemedicine, there are modernizing solutions on the table to help you improve the health of your patients as well as your bottom line.
In today’s blog, we’ll take a close look at the healthcare landscape, our options for modernizing our practices, and how to take the first actionable steps. So get your coffee ready and let’s go!
Table of Contents
Why Doctors Are Adapting Their Practice
For practicing physicians, you may be familiar with the limits of the medical industry. It could be brief, infrequent interactions with patients that don’t allow for comprehensive care. Or consider that long-term health planning is deemphasized in the traditional model, constrained by insurance company policies. In other words, you can’t practice the way you want. Despite your expertise, you are controlled and constrained by outside factors.
On top of that, traditional healthcare is doing everything it can to cut costs, including the wages for physicians. In fact, I know many doctors who have turned to side hustles to make ends meet. Student loan costs, decreasing salaries, increased administrative costs, and decreasing reimbursements all mean financial stress.
If you rely on your practice as your primary source of income, you may be looking for some sense of relief. Over the years, I’ve explored how generating multiple streams of passive income can help doctors choose how they practice medicine. Another route is entrepreneurship. And for those who want to continue their practice in some way, that means adapting and modernizing how they offer their services.
By modernizing how you practice, both professional fulfillment and financial security are possible.
How Should You Be Adapting Your Practice?
The only constant in the universe is change. And change is coming for the healthcare industry to meet the needs of patients. Those needs, broadly speaking, have been expressed by patients as 1) more patient-centered care and 2) the use of new technologies and modes of delivery.
Are you evolving with the current trends in medicine? Keep your practice not only relevant but thriving by considering the following.
Direct Primary Care
What is DPC? Rather than a traditional fee-for-service model, DPC charges patients a global fee—usually monthly or annual—for comprehensive primary care services without the involvement of insurance providers.
The benefits are clear. DPC offers an alternative to patients and doctors dissatisfied with the traditional healthcare system. It’s accessible, transparent, and, best of all, creates an environment of personalized, ongoing, and long-term care. As a doctor, you can care for fewer patients, help them focus on their long-term health concerns, and still earn a living. And it gives physicians more autonomy, as they can care for patients without the rules or pressures of external forces such as insurance companies or hedge-fund hospital owners.
When we became doctors, we did so with the goal of helping people. DPC gives you the leverage to pursue that original goal.
Additionally, DPC can create cost savings. Because there’s no need for insurance, you won’t need to pay administrators to handle billing, coding, or other elements of running a traditional practice. You can transfer part of those savings to your patients, helping the DPC model become even more attractive to them.
How does accessibility increase with DPC? Patients who wouldn’t typically have access to healthcare—whether because of a high deductible or because they don’t qualify for government programs—should have the means to join a DPC practice.
Because you can earn more, you can limit the number of patients you see. That leads to focusing on the patient and treating them holistically, not just the symptoms, while giving you additional time to develop personalized treatment plans. Oh, and no more six-minute appointments. That connection with your patients creates trust, better communication, overall satisfaction, and hopefully better outcomes. For you, that also means practicing with a greater sense of purpose and positive impact.
Telemedicine and Patient Portals
If DPC is too much of a change for your practice right now, consider broadening your reach by integrating telemedicine and patient portals (if you haven’t done so already). Since the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine has experienced significant reimbursement expansion thanks to policymakers and payers recognizing that it’s a crucial delivery method for care.
There are obviously challenges when introducing anything new, and telemedicine is no different. With telemedicine, you’ll have to reconsider workflows, staffing, and making sure patients are well-informed and prepared. But those things can be ironed out.
And consider that telemedicine could create a “soft landing” if you plan on transitioning to DPC. That’s because, historically, telemedicine has had a hand in popularizing DPC. By making doctors more accessible to patients, patients are more willing to go outside traditional systems to access health care.
According to the National Institute of Health, telemedicine also improves the probability of patient follow-up, benefiting both the patient and the practice. It also reduces missing appointments, optimizes patient outcomes, and is overall more effective.
But what about portals? The benefits of using a patient portal are numerous. It gives patients constant access to their records to monitor their own health. It allows them to provide doctors with updated information about their conditions—letting you update their care plan as needed. In total, this access means patients tend to be more successful in managing their health issues, especially chronic disease.
Regardless, patients have reported liking telemedicine and patient portals because they don’t have to wait in line and have more flexibility with access. Doctors can also access patient information more efficiently, speeding things up on our end to let us treat more patients.
Start Adapting Now
What are some important steps that can help you adapt from where you are now to a more modern practice? Here are some crucial things to keep in mind whether you are interested in DPC, telemedicine, a patient portal, or all three.
HIPAA
With workflows and technical elements of your practice changing, you have to provide the additional layers of security to ensure you are HIPAA compliant at each stage of your care delivery.
Although your administrative costs will decrease by transitioning to DPC, there will still be a need to look for an employee or partner who can manage data and security. And when it comes to telemedicine and patient portals, choose trusted businesses for your service platform.
Basic Regulatory Obligations, Licensing, and Credentialing
Regardless of any changes you make, you’ll still need to comply with the FDA, CMS, and other regulatory bodies. This is especially true if you adopt telemedicine and your patients are located (and receiving care) in another state. Would you be eligible to practice in that state? Does that state allow “foreign” physicians, as they are called? These are the types of questions you’ll need answers to.
These issues will require that your staff is trained to monitor the changing regulatory policies regularly.
Technology Integration and Requirements
It goes without saying that adapting your practice will coincide with integrating new technologies. As you look to make these changes, consider how they can be integrated into existing processes and workflows—you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
For bigger practices, this will help ease of use by everyone across departments and facilities. Not only operationally more efficient, it should also save you money on the back end since you’re not redesigning the whole system.
Patient Onboarding
Don’t expect that your patient will be familiar with your changing practice. Whether by yourself or delegating it to staff, it will be extremely important that you, for lack of a better word, train your existing and new patients.
Not everybody is savvy with technology. Not everybody will want to pay an annual subscription fee for DPC. And although patients historically engage more in both of these models, that may not be the case for your local market. When your patients don’t have the help they need to adapt to you, you have to help them adapt.
Beyond the nuts and bolts of how to be a patient—such as how to use a telemedicine software or interface—you should couple that how-to with extensive explanations as to why these changes will benefit them both in the short-term and long-term. Not only will this make your patients more confident, it will also grow the patient-physician connection (further ensuring the success of your implemented changes).
Once you’ve got a system down, the effort on your side can shrink to as little as five minutes—not bad. Five minutes is all you’ll need to create significant opportunities for your practice to grow.
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Thrive in Modern Medicine
So what do you think? Are you ready to make a change? Join in with other physicians who are part of this journey and share your experiences—help each other grow in a significant way. You can do that in one of our many communities here at Passive Income MD.
And if you’d like to get connected with like-minded physicians in person, consider attending PIMDCOM in Dallas, Texas this September! Tickets are almost sold out.
The key to thriving is adaptation, as evolution has taught us. So until next time, keep building those big ideas and keep adapting to modern medicine in order to thrive. It’s my hope that you take those actionable steps today to create your ideal life. Thanks again for allowing Passive Income MD to be part of that journey.
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Peter Kim, MD is the founder of Passive Income MD, the creator of Passive Real Estate Academy, and offers weekly education through his Monday podcast, the Passive Income MD Podcast. Join our community at the Passive Income Doc Facebook Group.
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