Planet Jeffro

This is the video from Columbia Journalism School where I presented Patient Communicator and Poorsquare.  Jump to 13:00 for my part.

I probably shouldn’t have said “my father cut all 3 of his secretaries” and instead said “he was able to run the office himself and his overhead dropped to under 15%”.  Note to self: always talk about the positive, and don’t celebrate slashing jobs in front of a room full of journalists!  What was I thinking?

The reality is that if small practices don’t start cutting some labor they will go under or be bought out.  The trend is simple: there’s no money for primary care docs so no one wants to go into practice and the ones that practice are seeing 35 patients per day.  That’s very bad.

A big trend is medical groups, but I’m not a big fan of large group entities.  The smaller, leaner practices are the ones that can innovate, can have strong relationships with patients which leads to better care/outcomes, and they aren’t concerned about investors or executives above them making bad decisions (I am reminded of Lehman Brothers…).  Economies of scale don’t apply in the digital age, at least for primary care doctors.

If you know any doctors looking to bring their practice into the 21st century, provide better care, optimize their workflows and spend more time with their patients… let me know: info [at) patientcommunicator.com