To be a Great Physician Assistant Focus on Patients not Numbers

Last night, was a late night in the clinic.

It was also a very long day.

If you looked at my "numbers" you may wonder why.

But nothing bothers me more than converting patients into numbers.

It goes against everything I signed up for when I chose to become a physician assistant.

In order to do great, work we must generate revenue. This is what keeps our passion and business afloat.

Money in medicine and its influence on medical decision making will always remain a necessary evil.

Without money, there is no clinic. Without money, the health care we want to provide for our patients cannot be a reality. Without money, we cannot afford to serve those that we aim to help, who in fact may or may not have that which we always seem to need more of; money.

So the gold standard we all strive to achieve is that steady state where we can generate a healthy revenue stream and still run a compassionate, patient-centered practice.

This is a tough balancing act, one that requires constant vigilance.

It requires vigilance because as a business starts to make money it is increasingly easy to obsess about this money and start to focus on the revenue stream.

It is easy to lose focus on what generated this profit  in the first place:

A genuine concern for the consumer (i.e our patient) and their needs. You know the people who drive our business.

I have found myself falling into this trap at times.  And every time I do I see my business suffer. The numbers, of course, start to rise at first and it is easy to believe that this is happening because of my efforts to focus on more revenue.

But, I think most of the time it is just a carry over from the previous period... You know the time when I was focused on my consumers.

The patients, not the numbers!

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