The Complicated Dance of Doctors and Drug Representatives

For many years now, pharmaceutical companies have relied on drug representatives to persuade doctors to prescribe their products. Why? Because it worked. In 2007 there were 102,000 drug reps in the field, buying lunch, delivering samples and angling for five minutes of face time with a doctor. But, as industry rules for gift exchange have changed and doctors’ time has become even more limited, this marketing model has begun to fall apart and big pharma is retrenching. Industry watchers expect a 25% reduction in the number of drug reps in circulation; recent layoffs in most of the major pharmaceutical companies are validating this projection. Read more

Developing Medical Office Protocols

As you get started, and as you reassess your progress and results, you’re going to want to have standardized protocols for many of the activities in your medical office. These can be bound together and serve as the core of your employee manual which is useful for your new employees, and I believe can become the basis for evaluating staff, giving bonuses, and even firing them should you need to do that unpleasant task. The more you automate, the fewer interruptions you will get and your whole private practice team will operate as one well-oiled machine. Read more

Improve Outcomes in Private Medical Practice

It’s all about “outcomes” these days. I’m referring to all the initiatives to measure and compare the clinical care we provide against the results. Much of medicine can be measured with datapoints, but because medicine is as much an art as a science, in my opinion, these new initiatives probably miss the benefits obtained with the “soft” stuff. Read more

Sales Representatives Have A Tough Job Now

When I first started in private practice, sales reps, mostly pharmaceutical representatives, stopped by our office throughout the day. Sometimes I had to tell them I was too busy to hear about their company’s latest drug for some ailment, and most of the time the representative was respectful and polite about my request to come back another day. Read more

It Takes A Village to Start and Run A Private Medical Practice

As much as we doctors like to be self-sufficient, there is only so much time in a day and we really do have more important things to worry about (patients) than how profitable our practice was today. Taking care of patients should be job number one. Read more