A survey of 1,000 patients conducted mid-April by GK Roper and Practice Fusion found that 62 percent said they receive the “best” medical care from their primary care physician.
Specialists were next (16 percent), followed by hospitals (at 13 percent). Urgent care was next (3 percent).

Almost 40 percent of those surveyed (38 percent) said that they felt that “increased communication” between them and their physicians would improve their care. They also said they’d like to have more opportunities for appointments (31 percent). Fifteen (15) percent also said they would like easier access to their medical records.

Not surprisingly, those who have higher household incomes (more than $30,000) are more likely to visit their physician for preventative care than those who don’t have as high an income (those with household incomes of less than $20,000).

Also, the survey’s results backed up the well-known belief that women visit their doctors more than men. When it comes to preventative care, more women (64 percent) are likely to visit their doctor than men (58 percent).

Yet primary care physicians are under extreme pressure today. Patients may want to have more time/better communication with their doctors, but those same doctors are facing increased hardship as the cost to run a medical practice has skyrocketed in recent years (PhysiciansPractice.com estimates costs have risen by 52.6 percent since 2001) while the continued declines in reimbursement rates make it hard for private practice primary care physicians to thrive, let alone make ends meet.

Whether you’re a primary care physician, a hospitalist or a specialist, medical practices across the country are eager to learn more about your expertise. Contact an Integrity Healthcare Staffing recruiter today to learn more about our opportunities!

We don’t have to tell you how hard it is to run a practice today. So we won’t go into the details as to why it’s difficult.

Instead, read below about some new technology (online and offline), staff efficiencies and other office practices that can help keep your practice running smoothly.

Many solo practitioners swear by such technological wonders as online appointment booking, asking patients to enter their own medical histories online, even the ability to e-mail patients. These tools can help a doctor spend more face-to-face time with patients and less time on necessary – but tedious – administrative chores.

Some “old fashioned” rearranging of staff duties also can help your practice become more efficient. Aim to work to a staffer’s strengths.  For example, is one of your team members skilled at helping patients wend their way through their insurance program “maze”? Consider having this person focus more on patient education and trouble-shooting when it comes to explaining insurance deductibles and payments to your patients.

Consider cross training employees. Practice benchmarking and make sure each employees sets goals.
You’ll be pleasantly surprised how getting rid of one unnecessary task can save considerable time because little changes can add up to huge improvements.

Meet with your staff alone and together and discuss where they think the “waste” is. These folks are on the front line of your practice and they’ll know intimately where things “go wrong” and where improvements may be found.

Consider creating a flow chart. Have everyone in your office take a look and discuss how the activities that go on in each area of your office have an impact on the others. Could some activities be done in a different area or at a different, non-peak time?

For example, where is your office copier/scanner? Do your receptionists have to get up and walk to another part of your office in order to scan or copy a document? Why not have a small scanner/copier right in the receptionist’s workspace. Those seconds walking back and forth add up and eliminating this time waster will allow your receptionist to get more work done. Just watch!

If you’re looking for a new position, either with a private practice or with a hospital, whether you’re looking to move across the county or across town, contact Integrity Healthcare. We have physician positions at medical facilities all over the country. Contact us today!

As insurance companies cover less of their customers’ medical bills, more and more of your patients increasingly must pay more of your bills.

Patients are stressed to the max financially today and are having a hard time coming up with out-of-pocket payments to their physicians.

What’s more, according to James Doulgeris, a healthcare consultant, writing April 19 at PhysiciansPractice.com, patients are “unprepared”  or don’t know that they are responsible for a larger portion of their medical bills.

“Patients,” Doulgeris writes,  “are not likely to see relief from this financial burden, and instead will likely see it intensify. This is because employers, which provide most health insurance as benefits, when given the choice of being the bad guy by reducing employees’ take home pay to offset higher premiums or passing the problem to patients and providers by increasing deductibles, overwhelmingly elect to pass the buck, quite literally.”

Doulgeris offers the following suggestions for helping you avoid bad debt as well as helping your patients avoid being surprised when your bill arrives.

When they arrive at your office, make sure they understand their insurance plan’s deductibles and  payment policies. If possible, show them what they could owe beyond what their insurance company will pay.

Be upfront about all procedures as to cost. This is especially important when discussing treatment plans, especially when it comes to treatments that have a high “cumulative cost” such as physical therapy, home healthcare, diagnostics, and hospital stays.

If your practice can afford it, consider hiring someone who can help “patients with their financial challenges, Doulgeris writes.

Encourage your patients to speak to their employer’s human resources department about starting an HSA or MSA.

When discussing payment with patients, watch the confrontational/negative language. For example, Doulgeris suggests that you could replace, for example,  “’I need’ with, ‘Did you know you could…’”

If you’re ready to explore new physician career opportunities, contact a recruiter at Integrity Healthcare. We have terrific full-time positions at hospitals and medical facilities all over the country. Contact us today!

No one has to tell today’s physicians how hard it can be to work as a physician and have a solid family life.

Physicians with a spouse and young children at home can have it especially tough.

The forums at StudentDoctor.com talked about this back in 2009 and some of the answers to a query
regarding whether it’s possible to work 40 hours a week as a physician were:

• “Yes, if you work part time.”
• “Sure, if you work as a locum tenens, shift work, as a hospitalist.”
• Another poster estimated that most physicians work 60-plus hours a week, and recommended that some specialities, such as dermatology, might offer a better work/life balance.

But the question remains: is it possible to work as a physician and have a true family life?

An Op/Ed piece in The New York Times in June 2011 stated emphatically, “NO!” The author, Karen Jenkins, a physician, urged those – especially women – who are thinking of becoming physicians to understand the time commitment they will be taking on once in practice.

“Students who aspire to go to medical school should think about the consequences if they decide to work part time or leave clinical medicine,” she wrote. “It’s fair to ask them — women especially — to consider the conflicting demands that medicine and parenthood make before they accept (and deny to others) sought-after positions in medical school and residency. They must understand that medical education is a privilege, not an entitlement, and it confers a real moral obligation to serve.”

Finally, she added:

“You can’t have it all. I never took cupcakes to my children’s homerooms or drove carpool, but I read a lot of bedtime stories and made it to soccer games and school plays. I’ve ridden roller coasters with my son, danced at my oldest daughter’s wedding and rocked my first grandson to sleep. Along the way, I’ve worked full days and many nights, and brought a lot of very sick patients through long, difficult operations.”

What do you think? Are you struggling to balance a good family life with the needs of your patients? If so, consider taking temporary physician positions. We have travel positions as well as locum tenens assignments with hospitals and medical practices all over the country. Contact an Integrity Healthcare recruiter today!

While social media can be a great marketing tool and terrific way to connect with your practice’s patients, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Yelp and other social media sites can do a number quickly on the good reputation you’ve built.

It can take just one bad comment, lie, over exaggeration, or uninformed statement by a patient on his or her social media presence – or even on your practice’s own social media feed – to take that reputation you’ve crafted for perhaps years and knock it to its knees.

It’s best to head off any negative comments before they happen of course. But this can be pretty much impossible to do all the time.

Attorney Erika Adler, who blogs at PhysiciansPractice.com, offers some steps you can take:

1. Monitor social media sites for comments. Got to Facebook, for example, and enter as a search term your practices’ name, your name, the names of your colleagues, etc. and see what comes up. Monitor your Facebook feed every day for patient comments. Google you name and your practice’s name at least once a week and see what appears in the results pages.
2. If possible, purchase the domains that are similar to the name of your practice so that others can’t do so (SouthStreetMedicalServices.com, .net, .biz, SouthStreetMedicalPractice.com., .net, etc.). Do similar with your social media profiles – register your name, your practices’ physicians’ names and your practice itself so that others can’t.
3. Unfortunately, review/rating sites such as Yelp, healthgrades.com, and ratemds.com are popular with disgruntled patients and physicians have little control over what is posted there. You’re also restricted by patient confidentiality issues.
4. Get thee to your attorney to craft a plan should a social media comment land on the bad side of defamation. Your attorney can help you ascertain whether the comment does fall into the definition of defamation and any next steps you should take. Some of the best and simplest of steps is to contact the poster to resolve the issue he or she has with your care and see if the individual would be willing to remove the post.

We don’t have to tell you how important your reputation can be not only for your practice but for your future as a physician. Vigilance regarding your online reputation today is another critical part of your “must do” list.

Speaking of your future, Integrity Healthcare has many great openings for physicians at hospitals and medical facilities all over the country. Contact us today to learn more!

Are you thinking of working at a private practice that’s following the “membership model”?

A “membership” practice is one in which patients pay a fee for the services of a physician. This is on top of their regular insurance premiums. The idea that makes them attractive to patients is the fact that membership practices provide personalized care.

Membership practices are not as expensive for patients as “concierge” practices, in which physicians don’t accept insurance.

Some physicians find that moving this type of practice model allows them to keep a private practice. It also allows physicians to have a better work/life balance, since membership model practices tend to see fewer patients a day than a “typical” physician  office.

Physicians also report feeling a deeper connection with patients, especially since patients who sign up with a membership practice do so because they, too, want a relationship with their physician and tend to stay with the physician over the years – it not decades.

Yet the membership model type of practice isn’t right for every physician. Here are some hints that this type of practice might not be for you:

•  Do you thrive in a high-volume practice? Do you enjoy meeting many people each day and do you get pumped up from the busyness and constant activity?
•  Even though you’ll see fewer patients a day, a membership model probably will mean you’ll need to be accessible to you patients 24 hours a day. Do you enjoy 2 a.m. phone calls? Do you like the idea of being available to your patients via e-mail and phone texts?
•  Many membership practices are very tech-heavy, relying greatly on EHRs. If you’re not comfortable with technology, working in a membership practice may not be right for you.

What do you think? Does the membership – or even concierge – model of practice appeal to you? If so, why?

If you’re looking for a new career opportunity in healthcare, send your CV to a recruiter at Integrity Healthcare. We look forward to learning how we can help you take career in the direction you want it to go. Contact us today!

es, according to a March article on KevinMD.com by David Houle and Jonathan Fleece, authors of

The New health Age: The Future of Health Care in America.

The two state that up to one-third of hospitals will close in fewer than eight years.

Why? According to the authors, “the hospital institution is in the midst of massive and disruptive change. Such change will be so transformational that by 2020 one in three hospitals will close or reorganize into an entirely different type of health care service provider. Several significant forces and factors are driving this inevitable and historical shift.”

The reason, they write, is four-fold

1) The U.S. must reduce its “crippling health care costs,” stating that the “average American worker costs their [sic] employer $12,000 annually for health care benefits,” a number that’s increasing by more than 10 percent each year. Also, the authors continue, “U.S. businesses cannot compete in a globally competitive market place at this level of spending. Federal and state budgets are getting crushed by the costs of health care entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid.”

As a result, hospitals are “generally regarded” as the “most expensive” portion of America’s healthcare system and are thus extremely vulnerable to cost cutbacks.

2) “Second,” according to the authors, “statistically speaking hospitals are just about the most dangerous places to be in the United States. Three times as many people die every year due to medical errors in hospitals as die on our highways — 100,000 deaths compared to 34,000.”

3) “[H]ospital customer care is abysmal. Recent studies reveal that the average wait time in American hospital emergency rooms is approximately 4 hours. Name one other business where Americans would tolerate this low level of value and service.”

4) Electronic medical records as well as healthcare reform will mean that patients who are “considering a hospital stay will simply go on-line to compare hospitals relative to infection rates, degrees of surgical success, and many other metrics. Isn’t this what we do in America, comparison shop?”

In addition, the authors continue:

What hospitals are about to enter is the place Americans, particularly conservative Americans cherish: the open competitive market. We know what happens in this environment. There are winners and losers.

A third of hospitals now in existence in the United States will not cross the 2020 finish line as winners.

What do you think? Do you think hospitals as we know them today may be going the way of the dodo – to extinction – or at least to an entirely different model than we know of today?

If you’re looking for a new career opportunity in either a hospital or other medical facility, contact a recruiter at Integrity Healthcare. We have many great positions available at facilities all over the country and we look forward to talking to you about them. Contact us today!

It appears that more and more private practice physicians are seriously considering selling their practice, usually to a nearby hospital or large medical group.

Some physicians balk at “selling their soul” to a practice.

An article on November 4, 2011 on PhysiciansPractice.com said the question of selling – or not selling – a practice isn’t just as simple as going from independent business owner to “working for the man.”

The article quoted Justin Chamblee of Coker Group (he specializes in physician compensation and practice/hospital sales), who said, according to the article that

“practices will indeed have to find ways to affiliate with larger healthcare systems in order to remain viable in a reimbursement system that will eventually layer quality metrics atop a volume-based foundation. But an outright conversion to employment status is not the only way for such affiliations to occur, and physicians should remember [Chamblee said] “that there’s always a tradeoff between the possibility of additional pay and the certainty of a loss of control.’”

As for many physicians’ fears that they will become just another employee with little autonomy, the article went on to say that “[v]arious co-management arrangements exist, in which the hospital gets what it wants (your services) and you get what you need (a degree of income stability, plus access to technological and administrative resources) while retaining some independence.”

In fact, Chamblee is quoted as saying:

“’What we always tell groups is that even though hospitals are really looking in many instances for physicians to employ, don’t make [employment] the end-all and be-all — the only option you consider,’…. For example [the article continues], under a physician service agreement, or PSA, you’d work exclusively for the health system or hospital, and it would keep your revenue while paying you a flat rate. But you’d retain ownership of the practice. And when the agreement ends, it would be renegotiated, or not, at each side’s discretion. It feels a lot like employment while you’re working within it, but everything’s negotiable and you needn’t be in it forever.”

Chamblee calls these kinds of arrangements, “employment light.”

If you’ve decided that working for a hospital or medical practice as an employee is the right move for your career at this time, please contact an Integrity Healthcare recruiter. We literally have dozens of opportunities for physicians and other healthcare professionals at facilities all across the country. We look forward to hearing from you!

Used to be that a word-of-mouth reputation could make or break a physician’s private practice.

With the advent of social media and review websites (such as Yelp and Google+), that “word of mouth” now goes viral at the speed of bits and bytes and can really help or harm your reputation almost instantly. What’s more, once something is on the Web, it’s there forever.

So just how good is your own online reputation?

If you don’t know, Google your name and see what comes up. Do you like what you see?

If not, you’ve some work ahead of you.

An April 2010 article at amednews.com reported on a physician who was the victim of poor reviews on the site Yelp.com put it bluntly:

“’When it comes to physicians, people are very cautious, and it’s not just a matter of taste. It’s a matter of your health and your life,” [the doctor] said. “This is much more serious than a review of whether you like a chocolate chip cookie at a particular bakery. People put their lives in the hands of doctors, so reviews on the Internet have a tremendous impact on the public perception of your integrity.’”

The physician went on to explain that she found it hard to “combat what she said were opinions about care rather than facts based on medical standards. She also faced violating patient confidentiality rules if she tried to dispel online allegations. Further complicating matters, most online reviews are anonymous, making it difficult to defend against dubious attacks from false patients, she said.”

So what can you do if you find negative reviews about you online?

The physician mentioned in the article told the reporter she is “vigilant’ about checking review sites for reviews about her practice. If she sees a poor review, she then contacts the patient to discuss why he or she was unhappy and to explain how her “recommendations were consistent with standards of care.”

Sometimes the patients were amenable to removing their negative reviews, but others were not.

“’I’m not saying [patients] can’t say anything bad about me. They can express their opinions to friends, family, colleagues … But if there’s an issue, talk to me,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to go on the Internet and ruin the reputation of a business that takes decades to build.’”

What about you? Have you seen negative reviews about your practice online? If so, what – if anything – have you tried to do about it?

If you believe it’s time to explore new employment opportunities, contact a recruiter at Integrity Healthcare. We’d love to show you the open positions we have available at hospitals and medical facilities all over the country. Contact us today!

Physicians have it a bit differently than other people when it comes time to negotiate a job offer’s salary. Many doctors – no matter at what point they are in their careers – may still have a tremendous amount of student loan debt. This is especially the case when the physician is just out of residence and was only making about $40,000-$50,000 a year for the last few years.

So now you’re looking for a big increase in salary, an amount that will help you pay those student loans and other debts and allow you to live in comfort while saving and investing for your future.

Follow the eight tips below for help in your salary negotiation.

1. Remember your value. If you’re just starting out, you offer an employer a physician who has had the latest in medical training and techniques. If you’re a seasoned physician, you probably have a cadre of patients who will follow you to your new practice.
2. If at all possible, get the hospital or medical facility to name a salary number first. If you must give a figure yourself, be sure to give a range, with the lowest figure you give actually the middle of the range you desire. That way, if you need to negotiate down you have a good chance of “only” getting the middle of your desired range.
3.  Once you hear the facility’s offer, don’t accept right away. Thank the individual and let him or her know you will think it over. Your next step is to present a counter-offer.
4. It’s best if you can give your counter-offer in no more than 48 hours. If you’re expecting to hear from other potential employers with their offers, let the hiring manager know and tell him or her that you’ll have an answer (your counter-offer) to the salary offered within a week. Don’t let more than 5-7 days go by before presenting your counter-offer, however.
5. Be prepared: your potential employer most likely will counter your counter-offer. The hiring manager may take a day or to present the counter to you and you may then take another day or two to counter the counter, if you choose. However, if the facility’s counter isn’t much higher than its original offer, you may not see your offer ever being met and you may want to consider turning the position down.
6. If you’ve been receiving other offers, you can use them to help your case. If you really want to work at one facility over any others, but it’s offering you less than you want (or less than the others have offered), let them know you have options. Say something along the lines of “I’m extremely interested in your position, but I’ve received other, higher offers. Is there any way you can raise yours to be in the other offers’ ballpark?”
7. You must be prepared to walk away. If a facility can’t meet your financial needs, understand that there’s a looming physician shortage coming our way (many people believe it’s already here). Your skills are needed desperately and we’re certain there’s a facility out there that will be happy to meet your request.
8. If you feel nervous about negotiating your salary, give the recruiters at Integrity Healthcare a call. We help physicians negotiate salaries with hospitals and medical facilities and we’d love to do the same for you. Contact us today!