The PMD Critical List: Are Doctors Control Freaks?

Doctors have something of a reputation among asset protection planners — they hate giving up control. This week’s PMD Critical List looks at why physicians need to learn to “let it go.” The list also includes a look at the growth of medical marijuana in Washington, DC, and a report on the untimely death of a celebrity dermatologist.

• What Is It About Doctors and Asset Protection? (Forbes)

Here’s a significant financial observation—“among asset protection planners, doctors have a reputation: they want to retain control.” But for optimal protection of assets, doctors must learn to “let go.”

• “Effective Executive” Skills for Doctors (Harvard Business Review)

To excel in today's health care management arena, physicians “require different skills than the ones they developed during their clinical training.” These include: Operations management and execution, People leadership, and Setting and defining strategies.

• DC Doctors Quick to Prescribe Pot (Portland Press Herald)

Here’s a peek inside a pain doctor’s office in the Nation’s Capitol where marijuana “continues to morph from contraband to commonplace.” Medical pot users “in Washington have more than tripled since the city relaxed its rules.”

• University of California Doctors Strike (Los Angeles Times)

Student health clinic doctors, who are paid at least $150,000 a year, have hit the picket line for the second time in 4 months UC administrators “of unfair labor practices during negotiations for the physicians’ first contract.”

• Improving the Doctor’s Waiting Room Experience (San Diego Union-Tribune)

The average patient waiting room time is about 20 minutes. And with “patient satisfaction” a growing factor in healthcare, it makes sense to know that “there are two drivers of the problem: economics and structure.”

• The Doctor-to-Doctor Watch (BuzzFeed)

Apple’s newly launched smart watch and its app for physicians will allow doctors to communicate with each other via a wristwatch. The price tag for this new technology “starts at $350 and can top $10,000 for the top-end luxury model.”

• Doctor Pay: Fee-for-Value vs. Fee-for-Service (Birmingham Business Journal)

Can incentivizing physicians improve primary care and reduce costs? A new study, which examines the possibility of transforming doctor reimbursement, says yes. The fee-for-value model “could eventually curb outpatient facility fees and professional charges.”

• Dr. Fredric Brandt, the “Baron of Botox” RIP (The New York Times)

This Newark-born, Florida-practicing dermatologist, “for all his flamboyance, fondness for outlandish designs, and stellar clientele (including supermodels, trophy wives, industrial titans, and Madonna) Dr. Brandt was an esteemed physician.”