Just how bad can it be?
Just how bad can it be?
PPMCs do ruin some careers
We’ll call him John Jones because he doesn’t want to be named. And let’s imagine he ran a 100-physician multispecialty practice in the Midwest for 10 years until it was bought out by a practice management company. Although he was instrumental in getting the process under way and argued for the physician practice management company buyout initially, he is among those for whom the promise of the new relationship didn’t bear fruit.
His main problem was the sudden decrease in decision-making power. "I had moved up the leadership chain from a buck private to a general," he recalls. But when the PPMC came in, he was busted back to a battalion commander — still with responsibility but suddenly required to get approval for decisions he had long made on his own.
Another aspect of the job he found difficult was reporting to people barely half his age with little or no experience growing a medical practice. "For those of us who had been content to run an organization and contribute to the profession through the MGMA [Medical Group Management Association] or another association, it’s just not comfortable."
Jones also says many PPMCs give the impression there will be a collaborative relationship when a deal is inked. "I realize that I don’t have the corner on good ideas, but my experience was that it turned out to be more a prescriptive than a collaborative relationship."
While he doesn’t think PPMCs in general are bad and says corporate medicine is part of the future, working with a PPMC is difficult for people like Jones. "I got into medicine for reasons other than getting into corporate America," he says. "I may have an MBA, but I wanted to have a top-to-bottom personal effect on an organization. I wanted total corporate responsibility."
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