Doctor's Digest

Many doctors not only think they don't have to market themselves; they think it's somehow inappropriate for the profession. But as Patrick Buckley, president and CEO of PB Healthcare Business Solutions in Wisconsin, and author of Physician Entrepreneurs, says, that's just not the case: “The market is changing. All of a sudden you're going to get up in the morning and say, ‘A third of my patients are going to Walgreens. How did this happen?'”

Put simply, your “brand” is your practice's personality, and it reflects how you will describe your practice to current and future patients. It's the thread that forms the basis of your message and permeates everything you will do to market yourself.

Converting your practice to the medical home model can be an ambitious project—but it will offer some impressive benefits: better, more integrated care for your patients; a more streamlined day; and fuller use of technology, among others. Your own role will change rather dramatically as routine care shifts from you to your nurses, medical assistants, and others, freeing you to deal with more complex issues.

The concept of the “medical home” is built on the idea of patient-centered care that will enable you to focus on your patients rather than the total volume of patients you see. Primary care physicians have supported this idea for some time, but only now is it gaining steam as government payers and insurance companies search for an approach that will make primary care more effective, more accessible, and more affordable. Nothing less than the future of primary care may lie in the balance.

If your practice is converting to the medical home model, you will benefit from using computers extensively for the two vital components of the medical home: information and communication. A starting point would be having electronic medical records, or EMRs. In addition, electronic tools like e-mail and text messaging can supplement or even replace phone calls, and in the near future your patients are likely to expect to be able to access their medical information over the Internet.

When it comes to e-mail, which kind of doctor are you: one who accepts e-mail as an unavoidable part of your professional life and deals with it accordingly, or one who would prefer to get rid of it altogether? If e-mail is going to remain a part of your life, and most likely it is, then it may make sense to become as proficient as possible in dealing with it.

The broad range of your professional activities makes it a real challenge to stick to a strict schedule of 15-minute appointments day after day. Fortunately, there is more than one way to schedule your workday. The trick is finding a method that meets your own needs as well as those of your patients.

If you’re like almost every other doctor, saving a little time each day is a goal that is perpetually just outside your reach. But if you can take a few minutes out to put some simple time-savers into play, you may be surprised by the increase in your efficiency and the time you save. Here are ten suggestions from the experts

It may be a little surprising, but physician-patient communication doesn’t always happen between the physician and the patient. Sometimes that communication is well under way before you even say hello. Kris Baird, a healthcare practice consultant in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, tells her clients, “Everything speaks.” She explains that everything your patients see and experience helps form an overall view of your practice.

In the field of patient communication, nothing’s more important than the clinical interview. Until the 1970s, there was no model for the interview: the physician simply asked the patient questions about signs and symptoms, and tried to put it all together to come up with a diagnosis. But now there’s been an explosion of research into physician-patient communication, and as a result, you can now choose from at least eighteen different models for the clinical interview.