From the
President
BRUCE A. SCOTT, MD
GLMS President | [email protected]
HEALTH CARE IS BUSINESS AND HEALING IS AN ART
W
hat do you call the head of a
corporation with 38 employees,
real estate holdings, web site and
marketing plan, and an annual budget of
over $4 million - CEO, chairman of the
board, business man, how about doctor?
I am a physician and the President and
CEO of our six physician medical practice,
a small business. I recently heard a quote
that rings increasingly true: “Healing is an
art, medicine is a profession, and health
care is a business.”
In fact, physicians are not only healers,
caregivers and patient advocates; we are major drivers of our economy. A recent study
by IMS Health (“The National Economic
Impact of Physicians,” April, 2014) found
practicing physicians have a $1.6 trillion
economic impact nationally and an estimated $11.5 billion impact in Kentucky. Physicians in our state directly employ 85,000
individuals with wages and benefits totaling
over $6 billion, and they pay local and state
taxes totaling over $400 million. Physicians
in metro Louisville employ an average of
almost 14 full-time individuals, with over
$1 million in wages and over $90,000 in
taxes to our local economy. Spending on
physician services accounts for only 16 percent of the health care dollars, and these
expenditures have a positive ripple effect
through our economy. Every dollar spent
on physician services returns an additional
$1.62 in other business activity, not to mention the improved health of our patients and
the community.
As the natural leaders of the health care
team, regardless of the practice setting solo, group, employed or academic - physicians need to develop leadership and
business skills. Traditionally, the point of
medical education has been to teach students and residents how to treat and care for
patients (I wonder whoever came up with
that idea) thus most graduating residents
are not prepared for the business side of
practice. When I finished residency, I, like
most intelligent residents, let my spouse
decide where we would live and I chose
the practice I would join based upon who
I wanted to be my partners - caring physicians, well respected surgeons and overall
good people, not considering for a moment
whether they were good at business or not.
Physicians have long been so focused on
taking care of patients (let’s be clear, that’s
a good focus to keep) that they have ignored the business side of health care and
turned the reins of leadership of medicine
over to the administrators, the healthcare
executives and the MBAs. As a result, the
health care industry sometimes seems
to have lost focus of the most important
thing - the patients. The world of modern
medicine has changed profoundly in a relatively short period of time. Health care has
transitioned away from fee for service with
independent doctors providing care to their
private patients and moved toward “value
based payment” and “pay for performance”
provided to populations. Whether we like it
or not, there is a general belief that therein
lays lower cost and better quality.
A variety of economic forces are driving
numerous mergers and acquisitions and
the migration of physicians from being
independent practitioners to working as
employees for large health care systems.
Louisville has certainly been no exception.
Regardless of our mode of practice, we can
no longer ignore the financial implications
of our decisions as leaders of the health care
team. Physicians, as well as other members
of the health care industry, naturally look at
ways to improve overall effectiveness and efficiency but physicians alone bring a unique
perspective because of our understanding
of patients and their needs.
The Greater Louisville Medical Society
has become more connected with the Louisville business community through involvement in Leadership Louisville, community
connections committee and our Wear the
White Coat Experience. This fall, the Wear
the White Coat Experience again gave 20
high profile business and community leaders a behind-the-scenes look at medicine by
affording them the opportunity to shadow
GLMS physicians in their practices. GLMS
created the program a number of years ago
in the interest of building two-way relationships between community leaders and
physicians. We want them to appreciate that
physicians are part of the business community and to recognize the important
role they as community leaders can play in
improving the health of our patients. This
year, I presented the economic figures detailed above. This program is called Wear
the White Coat because each leader is provided a white coat to wear during the time
with their physician partner. At the closing
dinner each community leader spoke of
their experience and observations. Every
participant explained how they were struck,
some to the point of tears, by the very special
bond that they saw between the physician
and their patients.
The few comments about the business
side of medicine were only to express disdain for the administrative burdens that
interfere with that bond. At first, I was frustrated that none of the participants commented on the impact of the business of
health care; but after hearing each of them
voice their respect for the healing and care
that we provide, I realized th