It common for physicians to ask each other, “Have you been busy?”
It’s hard to say for how many generations this question has been asked but the meaning is still the same. They are wanting to see if their physician colleague is seeing enough patients to keep their practice afloat.
Way back when, seeing a lot of patients would mean that your practice was doing well
The irony today is that you could be busy as all get out, and still have a failing medical practice.
Why?
It’s because of the ridiculous overhead that is now required to run a practice that takes insurances.
The irony today is that you could be busy as all get out, and still have a failing medical practice. Why? It's because of the ridiculous overhead that is now required to run a practice that takes insurances. Click To Tweet
EMR, many staff related to billing, office space for the billing staff, denials RCM…
The above is a recipe for failure.
Over time, reimbursements will only go down, and overhead will only go up.
This will exceed the capacity for a physician to make it up in volume.
Instead of asking if a physician is busy, the better question may be, “Are you keeping your overhead down and your autonomy up?”
