Are some doctors just meant to be independent?

As the saying goes, the grass isn't always greener when you have someone else worrying about how to run your practice. While it's often said that giving up business control and autonomy can be challenging for physicians, a recent piece in Medscape Today confirms that it's one of the top gripes among physicians who've experienced hospital employment.

According to Gary Matthews, a healthcare management consultant in Atlanta, the pain can be particularly acute for physicians who become employed after leaving private practice. In many hospital-owned practices, he notes, the hospital controls everything from "how the phones are answered to the signs on the doors to compensation." In particular, he says doctors may regard hospitals as inferior at handling physician billing and collection and wind up resentful of being forced to accept a lower collection rate than they could achieve on their own.

While some hospitals may indeed be more or less of a joy to work for than others, I can't help but suspect that satisfaction in these situations has more to do with a physician's personality and work style than anything else. When I recently spoke with Margie Satinsky, president of N.C.-based Satinsky Consulting, she agreed.

In solo or private practice, "you really have to be on top of everything," she says. "No matter how good of a practice manager you have, it's yours and you have it with you morning, noon and night." While some new physicians find this responsibility to be more burdensome than they anticipated, Satinsky says that other physicians thrive off of meeting business challenges head-on. "I have some clients who are hell-bent on doing it themselves, and they are fully capable."

Satinsky went on to describe several traits of physicians who are well-suited for running their own practices. Before you consider building a practice, going to work for someone else or hiring a physician as an employee of your organization, consider the following points carefully.

According to Satinsky, successful do-it-yourself physicians:

• Have a level of business acumen and are interested in enhancing their business skills.
• Are not afraid to ask questions about things when they don't know. They're curious by nature.
• Have the patience to explore options when there isn't one obvious right answer, as is the case for most aspects of running a business.

These three qualities may seem simple, but there's something almost profound about each of them, at least to me. They don't all necessarily go hand-in-hand with a medical mindset, but when combined with them, I'd imagine running a medical practice would seem a lot more like a journey than a trek. - Deb