Jeff Brown, MD

To build your practice today—to help people you have worked so hard to qualify for—you need a basic understanding of marketing: how to identify your target group of patients, their needs, and how you might meet those needs.

HMOs were conceived in the 1970s to slow the rising costs of healthcare, and despite the many unintended consequences associated with them, eventually succeeded. One thing they didn't resolve, however, was the means and methods of physician referrals, a web that no healthcare debate has thus far attempted to untangle.

Docs are now only increasingly coming out of training looking for a salary, benefits, and a ready-made practice, but older docs who are financially and/or emotionally overwhelmed are leaving their current situations and looking for cover.

Time was when docs never thought about that phrase. After training, you started your practice; a self employed small business.