For physicians frustrated with the at-times slow pace of change at larger health systems, becoming an entrepreneur via private practice can be gratifying, say those who have made the leap from employee to employer.
“Efficacy, I think, is by far the biggest joy” in physician entrepreneurship, said Omar Z. Maniya, MD, who is CEO of Maniya Health, a primary care and urgent care group with three locations in New Jersey. “When you see something that's frustrating you as a patient or other patients or even you as a doctor, you can just change it.”
Dr. Maniya began his career as a physician in academic emergency medicine but transitioned to primary care after helping his mother, Mariam Maniya, MD, a board-certified internist, with changes to her solo private practice during the early stages of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
He said he realized that entrepreneurship offered a way to achieve his goals that seemed so far off as a new attending physician. Dr. Maniya, who also has a master’s degree in business administration, said that implementing new technologies and offering new types of care for patients was more complex when he was employed.
“Effecting change took a really long time, and there are just so many layers of bureaucracy to get things approved in a big health system,” he said, adding that, for him, “private practice is really the place where you can affect change if you are frustrated with the healthcare system and you want to change things for your patients.”
The kinds of physicians Dr. Maniya said he feels are typically well-suited for entrepreneurship in private practice are those who have “curiosity, ownership and a deep sense of frustration” with the practice of medicine. The business skills it takes to conceive and operate a healthcare organization of any size, he said, are considerable.
“There are so many things you have to learn about billing, about operations, about staff—HR and staff management—about patient satisfaction, about marketing, about finance,” he noted.
Physician entrepreneurs can get help with those skills and advance their careers—no matter what the stage—at the AMA Physician Entrepreneur Forum, which will be held Aug. 7–8 at the AMA headquarters in Chicago. The forum offers an immersive, in-person experience for the most innovative physicians, residents, fellows and medical students looking to build, lead or invest in businesses across healthcare.
AMA members receive discounted registration. Learn more and register now.
CME credit will be available for eligible sessions. Additional accreditation details and credit hours will be provided upon final approval. See the full roster of featured speakers who have made their mark as physician entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship can affect change
When it comes to frustration with the way that healthcare operates in the country, Dr. Maniya said that physician entrepreneurs have the unique ability to channel that feeling into their business.
“Some of the best entrepreneurs in the private practice world are really frustrated with the experience their patients have, or how they might feel handcuffed in the way they can treat patients in employed jobs,” he said. “That translates really nicely to private practice, because in private practice, you have the efficacy to change some of that.”
It takes astute clinical judgement, effective collaboration with colleagues, and innovative problem-solving to succeed in an independent setting that is often fluid, and the AMA offers the resources and support physicians need to both start and sustain success in private practice.
Changes can be more streamlined
It can be easier as a private practice owner to remove inefficient workflows immediately, instead of waiting months for approval, Dr. Maniya has found, citing as an example the intake forms new patients must complete at some appointments.
“I hate going to the doctor and having 14 pages of paperwork to fill out and then I walk in the room, and … I have to answer all the same questions again. We eliminated all of that. Our new patient paperwork is one page front and back,” Dr. Maniya said. “When I see something that I think is stupid, I can kill it tomorrow.”
During the early days of the COVID-19 public health emergency, he said it took nine months to secure copay-free COVID/influenza testing for physicians who were intubating patients infected with the viruses. At his private practice, “it took me 48 hours to set up free COVID/flu testing … for the entire community—not even just for our patients, for the entire city.”
Additionally, in private practice, he can launch a new program and scale it quickly, whereas he has found that in employed settings, implementation can be delayed and impact blunted.
“I was also trying to launch, at the health system, a remote patient monitoring program ... It took six months to get that off the ground,” Dr. Maniya said, despite the devices being already donated and the billing code created. “In private practice, I was able to launch a remote patient monitoring system and get 1,000 patients enrolled in half the time.”
Not an entirely rosy picture for owners
There are considerable challenges for physician entrepreneurs who are leading a private practice, Dr. Maniya said, not the least of which is dealing with reimbursement from payers, a complex process at the best of times. He also named managing human resources as another, at-times unexpected hurdle for physicians, who are trained in medicine and not personnel management.
“That's not something that physicians are really exposed to,” he said. “You’ve got to hire the right people, you’ve got to coach them, you’ve got to train them, and then you have to deal with all of the HR issues that happen. That's huge and something that most physicians are pretty unprepared for.”
Another in-person learning event offered by the AMA this fall is the Independent Practice Accelerator Workshop, Sept. 11-12. Gain the hands-on, expert guidance you need to launch a new practice or strengthen the one you already have and get on the fast track to independent practice success.
The AMA STEPS Forward® Private Practice Playbook outlines simple strategies to start and sustain your private practice, including an appendix with a collection of templated forms for physician practices addressing patient, employee and administrative needs.
Guidance on how to put these efficiency lessons into action can be found on the AMA STEPS Forward topic pages on time-saving strategies and how to start and sustain a private practice.
