069 - 4 Tips on How to Negotiate Contracts as a Younger Physician to Improve Your Career Trajectory and Reduce Stress & Burnout

Ever wondered how you can negotiate a higher salary as a younger physician, even without any business experience?

In today's healthcare landscape, many young physicians feel undercompensated and overwhelmed by financial stress. This episode provides actionable tips to help you secure a better salary and reduce your stress by effectively negotiating your physician contract.

• Understand your true worth in the healthcare industry and learn how to confidently communicate it.
• Discover how researching potential practices and understanding their business models can position you for a better negotiation.
• Learn innovative ways to add value to a practice, which can serve as leverage in salary discussions.

Tune in to this episode to master the art of salary negotiation and take control of your financial future as a physician.

"Never Split the Difference - Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It" - Chris Voss

Free Temperament Test Link - https://temperamenttest.org/en-us

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

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By the end of this episode, you'll discover how you can negotiate a better salary by doing these four things. Welcome back to another episode where I help younger physicians decrease stress and increase income by transitioning from corporate to independent practices, even without any business experience. In this episode, I'm going to give you four tips on how to ask for more money when negotiating a physician contract as a younger physician. Off the bat, let me just tell you what they are and then I'll dive deeper into each of them. The first one I think all physicians need to understand their worth. You also need to do the research on the practice or the doctor that you're going to be joining. Number three, I'd say be open to adding additional lines of business to the office. And the fourth tip is offer to help create or improve an office EMR template or EHR template or process. So most of these tips are things that I actually did when negotiating my salary a couple of years ago. since more like 20 years ago. And they really served me well. And some of the things that I learned in negotiating was in books that I read, and particularly in one book that really stands out to me. And that's never split the difference. Negotiate, negotiating as if your life depended on it by Chris Foss and Tal Roz. It's a great book that detailed how a former FBI negotiator, FBI hostage negotiator negotiated negotiated with kidnappers in different parts of the world. One of the countries was actually Haiti that he talked about and how Haiti had a lot of kidnapping and a lot of ransom requests from these kidnappers. he found that there was a method to the madness of negotiating. so, you know, I'm not going to get into the book, but it's definitely a book that I highly suggest that you read. But the first one is understanding your worth. And I think a lot of physicians don't understand how much they are worth in the world of healthcare. Without you as a physician... Really, there is no healthcare, right? Because we go to medical school to learn how to take care of patients. So despite what the hospital systems might tell you or training programs or even other large practices that are hiring mid levels or hiring other extenders, you as the physician is who the patient wants to see. You're highly trained and you're actually seeking more information. You're listening to this podcast. And my recommendation is the first step in understanding your worth is to list out all your strengths. write it down on a piece of paper, all the things that you're good at, things that you've done, somewhat of like a resume of things that you've accomplished in your life. And that will help prepare you for interviews and prepare you for negotiating. Another thing I find very helpful is understanding your personality type. I've done some research on temperaments in the recent past and actually did a temperament test or gave our kids, two of our kids a temperament test and found that one of my children, one of my children, a melancholic. or is a blue. Kathleen Edelman has done a lot of work on temperaments. And that's something that I've done to help understand myself. Because if you understand yourself and understand your innate needs, then that allows you to understand where you might fit in the practice and whether or not it's actually worth negotiating with someone in a particular practice after you've learned about the doctor, about the practice, the people that are working there. I found out that my temperament and my innate needs are all about loyalty, a sense of control, appreciation, and credit for work. One of my sons is actually melancholic, and his needs, his innate needs, are about safety, sensitivity, support, space, and silence. Others might want more harmony, feeling of worth, lack of or feeling of respect, and wanting less stress. And others might really feel like they need or you need approval, you need acceptance, attention, affection. So temperament work, I think is important. And I can send you the link to a free test that you can take to understand who you are so that you can at least start to understand how you might fit in the world that you're wishing to in and then understand your worth and that will help you negotiate better. The second tip is to do your research on the practice or your doctor or the doctor that you want to work with. You really need to understand the business model. Is it fee -for -service? Is it capitated medicine? Is it concierge medicine? Is it fee -for -service? Is it Medicaid work or serving the underserved? These are important things to understand because if you are entering a practice and you don't understand the business model, it may not be practical for you to ask for the salary that you're wishing to ask for. So it's important to understand the practice, understand the doctor. Do the research, ask questions, ask questions about, you know, stress points in the practice. Because if you understand the practice, then you can, you can come into the practice and maybe help in solving some of the pain points that that practice is going through. So definitely do your research. It's important to understand the practice that you're working in, or you're potentially working in. And it gives you an idea of what you can do to help in that practice. If you come in with that knowledge of what the needs are for the practice, then you can... potentially command a better salary. Number three, be open to adding additional lines of business to the office. So that's something that you might not be thinking about. But if you're into let's say biopsies or knee injections or you've done some particular work in residency that you're interested in pursuing, if you're looking at counseling patients on weight loss, You know, that may be something that you can present to the practice so that you can say, Hey, if I do this, would I be able to get a better salary or negotiate a higher salary based on the additional lines of business that you're going to be offering that practice? And tip number four offer to help create or improve an office template or an EHR template or process. That's something I did when I first started in my practice. We didn't have an EMR at the time. And one of things I wanted to do is standardize the progress notes. I used to work in the emergency room down in Miami and we had templated progress notes that were check boxes. So that made the documentation process much faster. And that was implemented in many of the offices that I was working in. And so that created value in in me, value in the, the me as as a hire, that wasn't really making a lot of money initially, because as you are starting a practice, remember, you're going to run out of the loss unless you're coming into a practice with and you're bringing in your own patients to the practice, you're going to have to ramp up, you're have to see patients, you're gonna have to build for patients, and it takes time to build up a practice. But if you can, during that time, improve something in the practice, decrease some of the stress loads of practice. And that again is going back to understanding and showing your your worth. And that will allow you to help negotiate a better salary. So why am I bringing these tips to you? I'm bringing them because I've seen a lot of physicians, I've hired a lot of physicians who sometimes don't know how to negotiate. And it's, it's hard, because they then feel like they may not be paid or compensated for, for the work that they're doing. They may not understand the business model. And so they come in asking for a lot of money. But it becomes more or less a fight or tug of war when trying to get a higher salary. you know, physicians don't really understand the business model, don't understand what the pain points are and feel like they are owed a certain amount of money just because they have a lot of debt or because they are not understanding how the growth of a new physician happens. So I think it's important to, like I said, understand your worth, do your research in the practice, be open to adding new lines of business, which I think is one of the most important because that's a measurable thing that you can do. So if you can show that you can add an extra $50 ,000 to the practice or $100,000 a year and say, Hey, I'll take 50 % of whatever increase in revenue that I make. Then that's a, that's an easy one for physicians to, to negotiate. And the last thing is offer to help and create new office procedures. Again, that's in my opinion, a great way to, to help a struggling physician or a physician that's very busy is to improve a process. to make their lives easier. Because, you know, it's really about a partnership when you're joining a practice. You may not own part of the practice, but you're working with other physicians, you're working with other team members, administrators, and they want to see that you're a team player and you can, you can help in doing things that are not necessarily part of patient care. Thank you for listening to this episode. And I hope you enjoyed the four tips on how to ask for more money and negotiating a physician salary. Hopefully it's helpful to you. Hopefully you can use some of these tips and don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you can get alerts of new episodes.