Building a bank for doctors: What are current feelings about independent practice?

There may be a small swing of the market pendulum for physicians who want to take control of their careers through independent medical practice. But there’s a knowledge gap between desiring independence and operating independently, and that can make it difficult to start an independent practice. Michael Jerkins, M.D., M.Ed., president and co-founder of Panacea Financial, describes the current market vibe.

Medical Economics: What are physicians’ current feelings about independent medical practice?

Michael Jerkins, M.D., M.Ed.: I think that we're starting to see a little bit, even if it's just a slight pendulum swing, of interest in folks wanting to be in control over their practice. And there's certainly a knowledge gap in the physician space with, I want to be more in control, with I know how to be in control. That's like, how do I actually do that? It is difficult. And I would say, actually working with a lot of veterinarians and dentists through this work, the physicians are, in fact, the least informed on this. If you look at dental school and veterinary school and dental residency, veterinary residency, they're around industry pretty frequently, for better or worse, whether that be DSOs, large employers, practice brokers, CPAs, they're in the schools constantly, which is good and bad. But at least part of the good is there's some exposure there, they at least know who to talk to, they understand the players and basics, to a degree. Physicians, like, we're very pure generally, in that we're not going to have industry in our med schools, we're not going to have industry in our residency and fellowship. And so we kind of really are focused on clinical medicine, which is great. But the only detriment there is when you have these business-type questions, which is, I've been employed at this hospital or system for three or four years, I really would love to do this on my own, I literally have no clue who to even talk to to get started. That's where we find most people are at. The people who have some experience, they either worked at independent practice, they either shadowed an independent practice or had some family or connection to someone who was in independent practice. But by and large, you know, we're going through our academic medical journey and graduating and just finding an employer to get started, because we need to get our student loans paid down and start making some money and make sure our clinical skills are kind of up to snuff. But what we're finding is there's more and more interest in how doctors can be more in control of their time and of their practice. And you know, the primary care and internal medicine side a big demand, and kind of big shift is in this direct primary care, concierge medicine model, which is generally less overhead, you can have a lot, you can have pretty low overhead and start one of these practices, as opposed to say, a more procedural-heavy specialty where there's a lot of equipment and you have to have more complex build out in real estate. And now with the Big, Beautiful Bill allowing HSA dollars to be applied to subscription-based care, something like 30 million American households now have access through their HSA dollars to direct primary care or concierge medicine. We're going to see more and more, I think, demand for that service, and I think you're going to see at least an amount, not going to say it's going to be the majority, but an amount of doctors in your audience, you just mentioned, of primary care, internal medicine, family medicine, going into that space.