Visit this section of the website from time to time to read the most recent opinions of a solo practitioner striving to maintain a good quality practice in tumultuous times. The medical field is under siege by “third parties” of the medical-industrial complex.
Office management and medical decision making is slipping from the hands of your doctor to bureaucrats in the government and administrators of your insurance plan thanks to legislation and regulations passed behind closed doors. The trend is for practices to band together into big conglomerates to share expenses or for hospitals to buy out physicians who then become salaried employees. In these uncertain times doctors cannot always sustain the former competitive private practice model with direct control of how their patients are treated both in the examination room and by the office staff.
For better or for worse, the greatest force altering the practice of medicine is electronic health records. Unbeknownst to many, electronic health records have completely eliminated any vestige of patient privacy. Dr. Hutcheon has written a commentary on the loss of patient privacy which was published in the July/August 2015 edition of the American Journal of Therapeutics. Please call the office if you would like to read this article entitled "The Government Does Not Take an Oath of Privacy."
September 17, 2020:
November's Vote for Small Business
I'm writing to you with less than 2 months to go until 11/3/2020 at a time when my office by freedom of choice is temporarily closed. My solo practice was built from scratch. I took out the loan, bought the equipment, and opened the front door. As I've mentioned before, kind and brilliant doctors taught me patient care by example starting with medical school, and I am blessed with a dear family. Did I build this on my own?
In 2012 we small business owners were told, "you didn't build that," by none other than the then President of the United States. Wow. I realize that I run my own medical practice thanks to living in a country where the Founding Fathers came together to declare us free with the chance to pursue happiness. Of course this freedom comes with rules of conduct which is where the government fits in. And so I have obtained the proper licenses, office insurances, and pay my business and payroll taxes. I roll with every capricious rule change in insurance coding related to billing and the other expensive regulations non-medical people impose on me and my colleagues. The government is there in the background, but it surely didn't build my practice. I think I built it, but actually the patients did.