The Medical Entrepreneur Symposium is an intensive three-day, CME-accredited educational conference based on Dr. Steven Hacker’s book, “The Medical Entrepreneur: Pearls, Pitfalls & Practical Business Advice for Doctors.” Hacker argues that with “increasing regulation, competition from large physician and provider groups, and shrinking insurance reimbursements, maximizing profits through business acumen from day one is a must.” The symposium is being held at the Delray Beach Marriott in Delray Beach, Florida, from March 29 through April 1, 2012. Read more at the Medical Entrepreneur website.

The healthcare workforce of the future may bear little resemblance to what exists today according to a recent article in Becker’s Hospital Review. Roles are changing and non-physician clinicians have taken on increasingly more responsibility for patient care. The forces negatively influencing physician supply include the aging of the current physician workforce, maldistribution of physicians geographically, decreased interest in primary care, inadequate number of residency training spots, and a greater desire for work-life balance. Read more about these trends and the increased utilization of mid-level providers in the original article.

The American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) recently conducted a survey of Chicago-area orthopaedic residents to better understand resident attitudes toward business education. The article asserts that a lack of adequate business education leaves many doctors feeling powerless, frustrated, and ill-prepared for the world beyond residency. AAOS now offers a Resident Practice Management Lecture Series to address this problem.

Steven Liu, MD, founder of Ingenious Med, was recently named as the 2011 recipient of Modern Physician‘s annual Physician Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Liu was selected out of a pool of 68 nominees. All eligible candidates were physicians who own a current business serving the healthcare industry and demonstrate financial or market success with that business. Founded in 1999, Ingenious Med is an award-winning mobile platform that automates the revenue and charge capture processes for over 9,000 physicians in more than 800 healthcare facilities across the United States. Read more at PR Newswire or ModernHealthcare.com.

Billionaire physician and entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong believes that high-speed data connectivity, high-performance computing, and mobile technology can revolutionize health care research and delivery. The right infrastructure would allow “a vast range of information to flow between researchers, care providers, patients, and even payors.” The Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Advanced Health Inc. (CSS Institute), which announced in June that it would establish its headquarters in downtown Phoenix, has assumed financial responsibility for National LambdaRail, a 12,000-mile fiber-optic communications network for researchers across the country. Enabled by the CSS Institute’s $100 million commitment, the high-speed data link will develop a new emphasis on health information, with the CSS Institute’s Arizona-based activities driving that new focus. According to Soon-Shiong, this project has the potential “to accelerate the translation of new science into therapy and better health care. It will serve as a cornerstone of our long-held vision to establish a secure national intranet of health, and a digital infrastructure for continuous improvement in health and health care.” Read more at the Flinn Foundation.

From the event website: Since 1999 the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association’s Leadership Conference has brought together women and men at all stages of their careers to improve or learn vital skills, share leadership insights, and further develop and refine leadership capabilities through expert panel discussions, small group workshops, coaching, mentoring and other interactive formats.

The 2011 HBA Leadership Conference, with the theme Crossroads in a Connected World: Navigate, Network, Transform will be held November 9-11, 2011 at the Gaylord Hotel and Conference Center near Washington DC.

You can find more information on the event website.

Physicians generally have a poor reputation when it comes to managing their personal finances. A new Google service called Google Advisor may help with that. Though not targeted at doctors, the tool makes it easier to compare financial products, allowing you to check the rates for mortgages, credit cards, CDs, checking accounts and savings accounts. This is not a new concept (you may be familiar with Credit Karma, Mint.com or Bankrate) but the service does offer a clean, straightforward interface. You can read more at the Official Google Blog or Time Techland.

With the growing financial burden of providing employees with medical coverage, many businesses are looking for innovative ways to cut health care costs. Inc.com recently described how one company is working to provide a solution. Colorado-based BridgeHealth Medical thinks it has found an answer in domestic medical tourism.

With a business plan that revolves around negotiating discounted rates with hospitals around the U.S. and, in turn, offering these lower rates to businesses, BridgeHealth’s system encourages employees to travel around the country to receive treatment at a lower cost to their employer. By providing employers with significant savings that can be passed on to employees, in the form of waived co-payments and deductibles, and helping fill empty beds at hospitals with excess capacity, domestic medical tourism appears to benefit all parties involved.

While this certainly seems like an attractive business proposition, applying Groupon-like elements to health care cannot help but raise questions. What’s your take?

Many physicians dream about pursuing socially conscious business endeavors but don’t know where to start. Inc. published a series of excellent articles this month demonstrating the broad array of business models and corporate entities to consider when developing your idea. They discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each and share several examples.

Nonprofits, also known as 501(c)(3) organizations, are sometimes fueled exclusively by tax-deductible donations, a model that works best when “the user cannot pay” and “the organization requires the perception of impartiality.”

Nonprofits can also have earned income (think Girl Scout Cookies), a model that works best when the organization “has a valuable product or expertise, …the user has some ability to pay… [and] the nonprofit’s mission is job training or skill building.”

Hybrids are very complicated but they allow you to link together a nonprofit and a for-profit, a model that works best when: “the nonprofit’s unrelated business income threatens its nonprofit status, …the for-profit needs help managing its philanthropy… and each entity needs something offered by the other.”

For-Profits sometimes have a social mission directly woven into their business, a model that works best when: “the product is the social vehicle, …the user has the ability to pay most, if not all, of the purchase price [and] …the business cannot be separated from the social mission.”

I encourage you to read the articles linked above. There are also others in this series which you can find on the Inc. website.

Business Coach Philippa Kennealy, MD, MPH, of The Entrepreneurial MD recently interviewed Dr. Robert Novich and his son, Jeffrey Novich, to learn more about how they teamed up to create one of the most “tech savvy solo primary care practices in America.” Dr. Novich was recently featured in Forbes for his commitment to incorporating new technologies into medical practice to both cut costs and enhance patient care and relationships. He is also the creator of Patient Communicator, a web-based service that facilitates doctor-patient communication through a user-friendly interface. Read more in this article titled, “You’re never too old to be an entrepreneurial physician!”