The Evolving Landscape of Medicine - Nonclinical Opportunities for Doctors with John Jurica, MD

2024-04-02 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5_dGZQXi_c Transcript YouTube English auto-captions. [Music] hey guys this Dr Mike Wang welcome to another edition of bootstrap MD the podcast for physician and health here entrepreneurs today I'm inter interviewing one of my favorite guests he's a friend of the program uh he's been there almost since the beginning we're now at I think John I'm like 250 plus I know it doesn't escalate the number of episodes that you've done but you've been there from almost the beginning and uh I don't think you need much introduction but I think you know we get we get new listeners all the time so um if you don't know John um he's synonymous for being an expert in in non-clinical careers non-traditional careers for Physicians if you're phys doctor right now and you think only way I can make money is seeing patients then I think you're getting a lot out of today's interview he also has the upcoming Summit at the time of this recording uh that'll be coming up in the next weeks uh maybe months coming up but you'll definitely want to register it's the non-clinical summit uh where he'll be introducing guests himself other experts to talk about different paths that a physician don't traditionally take so I'd like to introduce to the program my good friend John jica John how are you doing I am doing very well I'm very happy to be back here it's good to see you again Mike good to see you so like I said I think a lot of people know your name you you've been around uh in a good way yeah been around we we both have been around in talking about just non-traditional career not traditional past for doctors but I like to get to know the man behind the The Legend of joho because I I remember there at the beginning where you were posting on Facebook and just you know maybe finding your own path and now that's since path it and and since found it and now is coaching and Consulting with other doctors to help them with their path so let's talk about yourself your your background you know what do you specialize in and maybe where you are in your career for right now all right well I'm trained as a family physician I practiced for well I'm still licensed I'm still practicing now so let's see It'll be well 38 years let's put it that way um and I was a CMO for hospital for 14 years and during that time for four years I stopped practicing completely then I went back into it when I opened up some urgent care centers with uh some colleagues and a and a partner who's actually the CEO and I am the medical director and part owner and when I did that I've got interested in uh looking at these non-clinical careers because I had a little more time on my hands once I left the hospital setting uh it was a little slow at the beginning we started from scratch so I would be at the clinic and I would have time to do other things and I got interested in this and so I started investigating it I started my podcast a physician non-clinical careers uh to learn about these non-traditional and non-clinical careers then I started doing some courses I start an academy called nonclinical Career Academy which is at nonclinical career academy.com you can check that out if you're interested it's just some lectures and actually I'm doing a weekly Q&A now I have about 27 of those posted inside that Academy um and then last year um I had a partner and I Tom Davis some of you may may know him uh he and I started something called new script which we have since closed but one of the things we did before we closed it is that we started we did a summit last year it was 12 hours of lectures over three nights it was live was on Zoom we had live Q&A and we had people come and talk about non-clinical careers non-traditional careers you know things like the Looms and tele medicine and all the other um jobs and things like that and so even though we stopped new script we're still continuing with the summit so that's my latest big project coming up that you mentioned earlier and that'll be coming in April so uh let's this is what I'm doing now I I love it too and and and like I said you know some people ask you know why do you do you do podcast you know and for one of the reasons that we do it is because we're actually looking to learn ourselves I know you started uh you know your podcast because there wasn't a lot of information in these these areas I think I may have come across like some manual from the AMA called like leaving the bedside or something like that yep and and and with that it was kind of like you know giving you like a slight eye like sure you want to kind of do this but there wasn't a lot of information um what if you learn from you know having your podcast in terms of the different careers that are out there because I think you I think we both realize that there's a lot more out there than may we have initially thought yeah when I started this um you know I I didn't really know what was out there other than what I had already done I was a physician adviser at the hospital for um so knew that I was a medical director for a while then I was a CMO but outside of that I didn't know and turns out there's there's at least eight or nine major industries to hire Physicians and you've got all the stuff they can do on their own um and so I've been exposed to this and it's the thing I've noticed too is at the beginning it was like everybody wanted to do something really simple quit their job as a physician for whatever reason and do something where they could work for someone else like doing um or being a physician advisor medical director ctor but you know on the podcast I keep learning about new things and things that didn't even exist five or 10 years ago and so my opinion has changed about what Physicians can and should do not that there's one thing but I think we don't give ourselves enough credit and if we could find a better way to pull in our medical knowledge and help clients or patients and still maintain control which is one of the things we really hate about being in practice sometimes is losing the control to a corporate employer it just it's just it's been eye openening for the last few years I mean I started the podcast I think six years ago now so it's been fun now I know you've mentored you know wide variety of Physicians different types of Specialties do you see is there like a a Common Thread that you see or is there like a recommended uh type of physician that should be attracted to these type of um you know some might say well if you're a physician just out of residency you shouldn't even be be looking at these things because you don't know what is actually out there um or is it you know is it someone for just someone who's in mid-career I mean are you seeing anything or what do you recommend for the doctors out there that are listening to this uh interview in terms of the timing of it yeah yeah uh it used to be we were kind of mostly looking at Physicians who had been in practice 20 30 years they were getting burned out and during retirement so need some kind of transition or do something that isn't so intense you know it's difficult after 30 years of doing surgery or intense Medical Care you know you just get worn out but really it's just the demand for it is at all ages in fact I had a question like I think less than a week ago someone saying well I'm a resident and I'm not going to do clinical care I've decided I forget he was he was an internist he said I I'm not going to do it what are my options so it can hit at any point as you've probably noticed too if you talk to Med students and and uh residents they're already burnt out and they think the next step is going to take them and they'll be less burned out but then they find out when they get into practice they're actually is burned out or worse than they were with in residency and in med school so unfortunately this is the way you know life is here in the in the United States yeah that's very interesting and again I think did a lot of these opportunities occur you said the last five new let occur because of the pandemic I mean I know that for many doctors they looked at the career a lot differently oh absolutely the pandemic did a lot of things to accelerate all of the remote jobs there were jobs that had been remote you know even uh you know foray into tele medicine you know and um just some of the work that was being done on site but with the pandemic they had to do it remotely so now like you can be an expert witness that's a common you know job that do people do part-time it's almost all remote now you even can testify in court remotely you can do depositions remotely so that part has changed a lot and it's affected a lot of different non-traditional jobs now as a doctor I wasn't used to asking for help especially when it came to subjects outside of medicine but then I found physician coaches.com in an instant I found hundreds of experts to help me in all aspects of Life on areas I was afraid to ask dealing with burnout starting a side gig money management even help with my marriage and the best part nearly all experts are Physicians themselves after reading their profile and a quick chat I knew I found the right Mentor for me at physician coaches.com help from away want to stay up to-date with join the lounge to stay informed with physician insights and [Music] stories the latest physician invester and entrepreneur info emailed directly to you join the lounge at bootstrap md.com thelounge as we were talking about this interview you wanted to talk about what you consider your your favorite non-traditional careers for physician so I'm eager to hear this so so what are your your three favorite uh type of jobs that are non I want to talk about this because it really has changed for me in the last you know five or six years as I've been talking to more and more people so I'm not going to go into all the you know what I've I've talked about and heard about but I've I've found people and the reason is some of my guests have really mastered these jobs and it seems to me a little more easy to to discuss and train some to do it than it used to be and so this is why I think these three in particular stand out for me so I'm going to go I'm going to do the reverse order three two one with my number one top job so uh the first one is medical writer now people think of medical writing as oh you know I can do that part-time while I'm still clinical and it's time consuming and can I really make money at it but it's a great job and it's it's really been hone over the last 10 years to make the pay is good if once you get enough clients or Publishers that hire you and what have you usually as a freelancer though rather than as an employee the hours are flexible location is flexible there's multiple genres you can do you can eventually become an editor there's management positions uh you can start before leaving your clinical job so that's always nice um we do have an advantage when we're medical writers that a lot of us don't understand a lot of medical writers are not Physicians and for us to write an article on a particular medical topic let's say whether as a CME or for uh patients we can do that a lot quicker than some you know Master's level writer or a nurse who's a writer somebody like that so really we can be much more efficient and that means we get paid more on a per hour basis because we can generate more output um you can do it as an independent contractor or as an employee and there's just lots of good examples of people are doing that they're working while they're traveling with their family they have a great lifestyle and they're definitely making um you know a good salary so that's my number three I I would even consider that myself if I was starting over somewhere in my midcareer um just to kind of go a little bit deeper what types of companies are hiring medical writers Well Medical writers can find jobs or freelance opportunities and a lot of companies that some of which they don't realize there are CME companies of course that hire them most of those are freelance you can work for a publishing company that's publishing to the public and they will also take submissions uh you can work for companies that publish for Physicians whether it's CME or nonc journalistic writing um now in the Pharma field you can do technical writing but there's some that's kind of not quite 100% Technical and most of the companies uh that hire writers for pharmacies are are Pharmaceutical companies rather aren't the pharmaceutical companies it's actually a cro and that's a that's a way to get in a little bit easier again freelancer you build these relationships and uh I'm trying to think of the other big companies any kind of an educational company that deals with healthcare related topics or public health will hire physician writers great let's hear your second choice okay now second one is uh a lot of your audience maybe still has not heard of this we've all heard of EXP expert witness Consulting that's been around forever but there's something called medical legal Consulting uh or medical legal pre-litigation Consulting and this is something really that hasn't been a separate thing until the last about 10 or 12 years uh there's actually a physician named Arman Feldman maybe you know him but he's the one that started this in in Earnest and actually has shared what he does with other Physicians like myself I've actually gone through his course so when you do medical legal Consulting you're actually not ever going to do a deposition you're never going to go to court what you're doing is you're reviewing all of the records from an injured patient it could be auto accident could be workers's comp could be any kind of personal injury and you're serving as simply a consultant to Wade through that organize it explain to your attorney client what is going on and whether the um you know the other side of the litigation has you know accept a responsibility for all the injuries that you discover and all the consequences of those injuries and actually any physician who's been in practice can do this so you don't have you you're not an expert you're basically you're a generalist looking at a chart on any type of patient just have to be meticulous and have the time it pays much higher on an hourly basis than than most uh Medical Care uh you can start this while you're still working clinically also and it's it it's just a lot more flexible and you can do it remotely and the hours are flexible as well so this one um has really been something new it's so interesting because uh Dr Feldman has actually started his own podcast in which he describes these cases and so if you're interested you can just listen to the podcast I think it's uh Physicians helping attorneys help patience or something and you can get a feel for it and do this either at the end of your career or as an adjunct to your career and uh that's one of the things you really can't do as an expert witness most expert Witnesses have to remain in practice you could do this even after retirement once you learn how to do it so that that one has really intrigued me and that's why I put it on my list today yeah and just to kind of clarify that too it is Physicians helping attorneys uh name the podcast yes if you look that up and you'll find that and they have I don't know about 30 episodes or so and uh it's it's really quite interesting and I think some of your listeners might find it intriguing all right so we talked about medical writing we've talked about this medical legal type of consultant what is your number one non-traditional career okay so my number one I've come to this to the conclusion that the best opportunity for those Physicians who you know are really looking for something to do and it's similar to what you teach basically this is a broad uh area and what it is is a is a clinical or what I might call a clinical light business clinically related business so I mean you could be DPC or something like that but it's other things like Aesthetics and Med spas and and uh infusion centers or even something uh like my wife is doing which I can use as an example in a minute but the thing that I like is to be able to create your own business you can be the CEO of your life and your business as you write about in your book you're not really accountable to other people you can scale it you can hire a bunch of people to to extend your reach and even sometimes it can be something that you passively supervise um and not only can you earn more if you know if it's success ful and most of these really are if they're planned properly but the thing that we forget is that generally they become an asset that is you can sell at the end and that's that's the thing that really when I have interviewed the MedSpa owners and uh particularly one that I'll mention that sold her MedSpa and even in talking with my wife now because we're getting ready to sell her business so let me tell you about her business a little bit so she decided about 15 years AO that she wanted to do something after she stopped working as a a um respiratory therapist and so she looked around and she was interested in doing something that would be very helpful to people kind of like clinical medicine a service and so she opened a a franchise for a a senior care business we'll call it that it's in home personal care it's not home health and so she started doing that and built that up over time and ultimately now it's been 15 years and she's generating like 200 to 300K a year in whatever you want to call it combination of salary and and uh I guess distributions she loves taking care of seniors she has a great reputation in the community and basically since it's time to sell then we'll get you know basically almost like selling a house that has no mortgage you're going to get a big asset which can just go into your retirement you know part of your retirement plan so um I like I like that idea and I think there's a lot of things like you've talked about um and as I've mentioned here earlier um that it's just it's a great thing and it's it really leverages all of a physician skills most of have to learn a little bit more about business but I think at the end of the day it's going to be the most fulfilling thing and financially might be the best option I mean you can work for a hospital as a CMO for you know 300 400,000 a year and trying to put all that money away but when you quit all you have is what you put into it in terms of retirement accounts it's not like you really have an asset so that's why I'm I'm really getting interested in that um I mentioned a couple of other other examples if that's okay you might know Jason Ryan he was he was on my podcast long time ago a few years ago and he started boards and Beyond which was designed to uh was it was just an educational platform to teach his medical students where he was working well he did that for about 10 years and he sold that to McGraw Hill in 2022 now I don't know what you know what they paid for that but I'm sure he got a big cash out of that same thing Greg Hansen he was running something called flip MD um where he was helping clinicians to find Consulting gigs it was kind of like a tech thing really because like an app and he sold that two years after starting it to to good RX and again I probably had a great cash out so I mean not everyone's gonna have that kind of turnaround I mean you know my wife's franchise took years to build but I think Physicians could do it and they're gon get they're just going to be it's like running your own practice but without insurance and a corporate you know like going to the hospital have to deal with the corporate mentality over there yeah I I love it interesting enough Greg and I actually went to the same high school to together we found him yeah and and but I'm much older he has you know many many classes over what I think one of the key things is in and and trying to trying to kind of classify these type of health related businesses is the physician is not the integral component of providing that service if you notice this um that uh whether it's you know as I'm the owner of like a med spa or the o with your wife she's the owner she's not performing as like a rest therapists performing these type of services uh it's it's because if you if you are the physician and you're the integral part of the business you're never going to be able to sell that business we see this with solo practitioners who worked you know 34 years nobody's going to buy it because nobody's gonna pay for that physician salary for the most part is nobody's going to usually have to do it it's where they you know the business is providing some type of product or some type of service and that's what's attractive to you know the McGraw Hills to these other different companies good gxes because that's an asset that they can use that some value and it's not essential for the physician to be seeing patients which which is you know um it seems you know kind of intuitive but you know you see again lot these solar practitioners who like I worked there for all these years and I unfortunately nobody really wants to purchase that practice for the most part well yeah now when I was a CMO I was helping my Hospital purchase practices and they had a little bit of wiggle room where they could kind of entice The Physician but the Physicians were always completely frustrated by the fact that they they could maybe get a h 100,000 for their practice that was it they thought they had this million-dollar asset but it's like no the hospital's got to hire Physicians to do your job or they have to keep you on as an employee which is where all the income goes to in fact hospitals lose 100,000 per per employed physician on average so there's nothing there unless you build something that has these other services or you know I see some good ortho groups and GI groups where they'll have a lab and they'll have a surger Center and things like that which you know they can get some you know value from that yeah some some assets equipment sure yeah but for the most part uh yeah you know it's it's if you can take yourself out of the the business in some capacity where you're not the rate limiting step as we learned like in chemistry you're going to be a lote of most other doctors who and businesses absolutely so that's my new favorite I think it's where I'm going to retire on that note okay well I've been preaching this for years so again exactly I know I'm coming back to Micha Ming after all these years he tried to beat this in me yeah and it's it's true so we've got the summit coming up let's let's talk about it what's it all about who should attend what will they learn tell us everything about this okay so here's the the scoop on the summit um we're calling it clinical practice make it great or move on because what we're doing this year is we're actually bringing people in that are talking about the practice and small business involving Healthcare like we've just talked about uh and then we got an attorney there who's going to talk about how to protect yourself when you're doing one of these Ventures we are going to also highlight some non-traditional careers so um there's a lecture on do you really need to leave medicine or is it just a crappy bar boss or job you know that's the first decision you have to make if you like practicing medicine and then these business startup ideas you know we've got uh uh we're having a lecture on uh building a profitable small business we got the cash based Medical Clinic that you're going to talk about we're GNA be talking about Med spas and also got a couple that are coming on that co-own and run an Infusion Lounge it's a doctor and a nurse so that should be interesting and then we'll go back into some of the non-clinical stuff the medical legal I can have someone uh talking about that expert witness Consulting um medical Affairs regulatory consulting which is something that can be done uh for medical device companies and then another one that's kind of intrigued me lately is doing remote Social Security disability reviews not doing an IM but taking the paperwork that's been produced already and doing another level review of just the paperwork which can generate you know a good $2 or $300 an hour so those are great and then just to cap it off we're going to have someone talking about how investing in real estate can make you a better physician so I think you know most of the people that are going to be presenting other than yourself and it's going to be fun and what's the cost it's free okay well can't make money doing that but it's because we want to reach as many people as possible the live activity which is I give you the dates and the times they can come to for free so come take notes we want to make sure that if somebody has a particular interest in one of these topics they can come and join us for free it's on April 16 through 18 from 7 P.M to 11: PM Eastern and um three days in a row 12 lectures Q&A um and um there will be an opportunity to buy the recordings if you like and so uh yeah I would invite since you're participating as a speaker and you're going to be helping to promote it uh I think you've got a uh uh link that they can use to find out more yeah we have a link if you'd like to register again I highly encourage you to do so if you're even if remotely interested in non-traditional careers or maybe you're set you know you like where you're at in your um your career right now but you know things can change we all know this with the pandemic sometimes our our jobs aren't as secure as what we once thought we want to see what our different options are and I think it's good to be proactive so if you'd like to go ahead and register our link is bootstrap md.com 2024 Summit so that's bootstrap md.com 2024 Summit go ahead and get registered you get all the information you'll you find out who are the speakers the topics all that and more uh it's right there for you so again uh John I love when you put these things on it just opens up uh you know my eyes about what is out there and it seems like each time there's there's something new I didn't even know about this social security I guess second look or or what where you can make a additional income for doctors yeah there's always something new coming out and it's someone's got to keep our colleagues informed so that's what we're trying to do we do it on our podcast and the summit's going to be another way to get the word out all right John I know you're busy planning the summit and and interviewing on all that any last minute thoughts before we end the call today well I guess the last minute thought i' would go back to is what why we started all this way back when it's that you know we're here to help our colleagues you don't need to be miserable in your job it just there's no need for that even though it's hard work okay fine you got through the residency Fellowship once you're working you should look forward to going to work if you wake up every day hating the thought of going to work if you don't like the schedule that you have please change something maybe you just need to find another location another boss maybe a different type of practice whatever it is you should be happy you should enjoy your job every day and so if you need to find someone like mik or me to help you or do it on your own but just just make a change and and keep looking for that that perfect job for yourself uh love the words of wisdom John thank you again thank you for spending the time with us again the nonclinical Summit is is coming up go to boot trp md.com 2024 Summit to sign up John thank you again for joining us today it's been my pleasure hope to see you again soon and thank you all for listening as John said you know if you're not stuck if you feel like you're stuck there's always different options that are out there me New Look new career new boss New Path for being a physician as as we know there's so many different paths to go into as as you'll learn and you just learn and you'll be learning in the summit uh do something every single day to keep you closer to forward [Music]