Introducing MedWay: Physicians can be healers first, business operators second

Many physicians go into medicine to treat patients, not necessarily to run a small business. MedWay CEO David Ford explains how the new management agency can help doctors return to healing, not stress over things like payroll.

Medical Economics: It seems as though there's a pool of physicians who really like being business operators. There are some who sort of figure out how to handle it. And then there are some who really just want to focus on medicine, and certainly that's a noble desire and occupation. Can you talk about that sort of dialectic that goes on about independent physicians, both serving patients as physicians, as well as being small business operators, and some of those challenges?

David Ford: I think what we found is, there are a lot more independent physicians in that last bucket who are looking at the world and thinking they didn't go to school for, you know, some cases, 20 years, to run payroll, right? And we know that some of those hassles are why physician burnout is so epidemic right now. Because these physicians are trained to treat patients, and I think as a society that's what we want. We want them in that exam room, treating their patients, doing what they are very, very highly trained to do. And I think that was the thinking behind MedWay, the more of all of that other stuff we can take off their plates, the better. We’ll restore some of that joy of being a physician, they can spend more time working with their patients to heal disease, which is what they're trained to do.