040 - 5 Reasons to Embrace Medicare Advantage Today In Your Medical Practice & Residency Training As A Physician

In this episode, Coach JPMD acknowledges September 17th - the day designated as Physician Suicide Awareness Day.  The only way for physicians to help their patients powerfully is to take great care of themselves.  Coach JPMD also discusses the 5 reasons you should embrace Medicare Advantage plans today!. Pat Flynn, a prolific podcaster and entrepreneur has said many times - there are riches in niches (or something like that).  Considering the vast number of seniors that will become Medicare eligible in the upcoming years, it is important you consider the opportunities and value in embracing these insurance programs. 

My mission is to help populations live long by increasing physician awareness of spiritual, mental and physical health globally.

Show Notes

Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.

Transcript

Intro  0:00  
Welcome to the practice impossible podcast. We're your host, Jude Pierre MD, also known as Coach JPMD discusses medical practice topics that will guide you through the maze that is the business of medicine, and teach you how to increase profits and help populations live long. Your mission should you choose to accept is to listen and be transformed. Now, here's your host, Coach JPMD.

Coach JPMD  0:26  
Welcome to the practice impossible podcast with your host, Coach JPMD. That's me. This week, we're going to discuss five reasons to embrace managed care practices today. But before we get into those five reasons, I want to want to say a couple of things. One of which is actually a story on my 95 year old patient, who I saw last week, I came out of the room dying of laughter with tears coming down my eyes because I just couldn't believe he said what he said. But he'd come into the office I'd been seeing him for over 20 years, I saw his his wife who passed away and he's just a nice gentleman. But his blood pressure was 205 over 104 came in with no symptoms, no chest pain or shortness of breath, no visual changes. I was concerned obviously. So I call my M.A. told my my M.A. to give him some clonidine before I even started the visit, just to see if we can get his blood pressure down, gave him his blood pressure medicines and talk to him about his symptoms and what he's going through and, and how he's been opening up his house to some family, friends who had some problems with their home. And you know, he was doing okay. And at the end of the visit, attempt, hey, we'll come back and check your blood pressure. And he looked at me and said, Doc, why are you trying to keep me alive so long? Like, what do you mean? It's like, Doc, I'm 95 years old. What are you trying to do? 

I said, say why are you doing this? And I said, you know because I like you. And he just busted out laughing. And it was interesting to see his perspective on life. And here I am trying to do what I think was the best thing. But he was just puzzled as to why I was. I was doing everything for him. And you know, it was just, it was a funny story for me. So, you know, I wanted to go over my why, because September 17, if physicians don't know, they should know that September 17 of this past week, was a physician suicide awareness day. And I'm not sure if many people understand the seriousness of this, this day, and of the statistics that surround physician suicide, and we as physicians commit suicide 1.8 times more than the general population. And that's a daunting number. And physicians need to understand the business of medicine, they need to understand that in order to survive and thrive in this really, really stressful culture that we live in, and that we work in, and culture that we live in. And one of the things that I have become passionate about his teaching physicians and through my courses, through coaching, through even this podcast, my goal is to decrease physician stress and increase profits to all physicians. And I want to bring awareness to the the support that physicians have through physician support line at 888-409-0141. And that line is available from eight to 1am. Every day, and also Pamela Weibel, Dr. Weibel has been a champion in bringing awareness of physician suicide in our community. And she can be found at ideal medical care.org. And she's a wonderful resource and really is a champion to the cause. And you know, it's important for us to continue to support each other and do what we need to do to take care of ourselves. Because if we're not able to take care of ourselves, and how can we take care of our patients. So I want to go over the five reasons why we need to embrace a managed care today, because that's one thing that I think that we can do as physicians to help decrease our stress and increase our profits. And I'm gonna go rapid fire through the five things and then we'll go into detail. First thing is we need to do, we need to embrace it because 48% of our Medicare enrolled patients are going to be in a Medicare Advantage plan as per the latest statistics. Number two, it's a niche practice, not many people are doing it. Number three, one of the best ways to see and manage a set of patients or a patient population over a long period of time is to to see a Medicare Advantage patient or managed care patient. Number four, guaranteed income. And number five, the 5, the fith reason to embrace Medicare Advantage practices is this is that you can develop a great referral team. So number one 40% of Medicare patients that are turning 65 or that are eligible for Medicare are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan. So if that's the case, So that's half of the population of patients that have Medicare are going to be in a Medicare Advantage plan, whether it be through United fee for service or through a manage capitated plan. Those are those are real numbers. So we need to understand these numbers as specialists, and particularly as primary care service providers, because we're entering a stage in in the US population, where a lot of our seniors are turning 65. And they're going to need primary care doctors to take care of them. And if we were around, and we understand this, well, we'll do really, really well as physicians. Number two, so niche practice, I don't know what the statistics are, and how many primary care physicians are seeing Medicare Advantage per patients. But in any niche business, or any niche practice, you stand to do very well, if you know how to manage that business, or that population, or that customer or that patient base, not everyone is doing it. And if you do it, well, you can make a great living. And the number one way to, to do this is to keep patients healthy. So screening exams, seeing them frequently. And also keeping them out of the emergency room in hospitals, we know that at least in my population, over 50% of patients who hit the emergency room will end up being admitted to the hospital. So if we can keep our patients healthy by doing the screening tests, and seeing them often and treating problems early, coaching them on how to live a healthier lifestyle, that's going to be more money in your pocket in this niche practice. And if you know how to do it, well, then that will definitely decrease your stress. And number three, one of the best ways I think to manage a patient population is to see managed care patients, because if you manage those patients while they're so... let's say you have a Medicare Advantage patient, that's 65, the US life expectancy, unfortunately dropped by three years this year in 2022. If you see them for 15 years or so, and you do a good job, keep them out of the hospital, you keep them healthy, then you develop a deeper relationship with your patients. And that in turn really guarantees your income that goes to the number four, but we will get to number four, and fee for service patients tend to move with their jobs. So if you're a patient that's on a UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and you start to develop a relationship with them, and you're treating their chronic medical conditions, but then they change jobs where they move, then so there goes your income, there goes your patient population. So I think it's it's really a keen way of of managing a patient population over a long period of time, and allows you to like I said, Number Four guaranteed income. Because if you've got a patient with 65, and has Medicare or Medicare Advantage plan, then you know, you don't have to worry about them paying you because the government will pay you. So that's a for me a no brainer. And number five, you can develop a great referral team with managed care patients. What do I mean by that? It's almost like residency and residency. Remember, when we were seeing patients and we needed things done, you'd go to your friends that are rotating in surgery or rotating in infectious disease and say, Hey, I have a case I need you to your help on. Can you please round early so I can discharge a patient early or you text the attendings or you have conversations in the hallways? Well in managed care. I have a great team. I have a team of consultants that if I call them they are responsive to me. I had a patient actually today who had been in the hospital at a nephrostomy tube placed and she was she was really anxious. She had a nephrostomy tube and she had been trying to call the urologist had inserted the nephrostomy tube for over a couple of days, her son was involved. I tried to call the patient, the urologist and he was in the room and wouldn't come out to talk to me. Now this is a urologist that I don't usually refer to and patient had gone to an emergency room and was admitted and had a complicated hospital stay. I really wasn't involved in her care. But if she was in my network, she would get the response that I usually get from my specialists. I texted my urologist and he texted me same day, and I'm gonna be in communication with him. And unfortunately, I'm gonna have to switch her urologist so that we can get that nephrostomy tube taken care of. So that's the beauty of having a good referral team because then that allows us to to manage patient populations better. So I wanted to tell you what these five things were their five reasons to embrace managed care practices today because it's something that is not going away. It's popular. It's what patients are looking for. And it's what I think is going to help decrease physician stress and increase profits. And hopefully if we do that, then we'll have an opportunity to help decrease this. This crisis that we have in our profession that's with a physician suicide. And again, if you have any thoughts, any help that you might need with your stress, please contact a colleague, contact a friend. Call the physician support line at 888-409-0141. They're open from 8am to one every day. If you liked the episodes, follow me. Share the episodes with your friends, and just keep practicing impossible because that's what we do here.