How To Spot a Doctor Who Is Not an Entrepreneur

There are many misinterpretations on what it means to be a physician entrepreneur. Here are 10 myths.

Because people, particularly other doctors, fear what they don't understand, "physician entrepreneurship" gets a bad rap because most people think it means making money off the backs, or other body parts, of patients. At its extreme, physician entrepreneurs are just immoral profiteers.

They fear them:

1. Because they are afraid they will place the profit motive above patient interests.

2. Because they don't trust "business people" and, when it comes to medicine, "money is dirty" and the root of evil.

3. Because they think entrepreneurship is about creating a business.

4. Because they think entrepreneurs are dishonest.

5. Because they think it corrupts the professionalism of medicine and encourages conflicts of interest.

6. Because they think it attracts the wrong kind of person into medicine.

7. Because they think it is a waste of a medical school education and has no place in the curriculum.

8. Because they are fed up with "high priced suits" that don't add value ripping off the system.

9. Because they don't think doctors can do both and should stick to medicine.

10. Because they think doctors are innately lousy business people.

Since so few doctors have an entrepreneurial mindset i.e. a frame of mind that pursues opportunity with scarce resources with the goal of creating user defined value through the deployment of biomedical and clinical innovation, most of the fearful won't have to worry. Here's how to tell you are not in the hands of a physician entrepreneur:

1. They have no interest in innovation

2. They don't know how much you will have to pay for your care

3. They have no interest in nor do they understand value

4. They are resistant to any new models of care

5. They will not return your email or texts in a timely manner

6. The plants in their office are dead and the magazines are 2 years out of date

7. They charge you to use WIFI in their waiting rooms where you do a lot of waiting

8. They couldn't care less about sales and marketing

9. They will send you to collection when you dispute your bill

10. Their idea of a quality patient experience is your being able to find a place to park and not resist when you have to give your social security number to get care.

Don't worry. Be happy. Your doctor is probably just doing what he was trained to do.