There are two valuable reasons why all physicians, especially medical students, should obtain or demand from their medical school academic business education.

About 98 percent of physicians and medical students have never had an academic business education. About 30 to 50 percent of graduating medical students prefer private medical practice—which requires business and marketing knowledge to reach their optimal potential in private medical practice as described below.

Private medical practice is a legal and recognized business entity.

The universal standard for every successful business on this planet is based on using the tools available in the business and marketing education and to the degree that the owner desires. All successful clinical medical practice forms are based on business principles and marketing methods, or they fail. It’s true for medical schools as well.

Over the last century, the 174 accredited medical schools have never offered or provided a business education for medical students. Physicians, either independent or employed in clinical medical practice, therefore lack a fundamental financial backup should a physician quit, become forced out of, or lose their medical license to practice medicine.

Standing in line with job applicants relegates these individuals to the level of high-school education status. A past business education puts you at the head of the line every time.

There will be a time when you ask yourself, “Why would my medical school refuse to offer or provide for me a business education knowing that it would enable me to reach my expectations for my career and become a better physician?”

Because it will take you all the years in your medical practice career to ever approach the business knowledge that you should have had at the beginning, is an unsurpassed tragedy in the medical profession that has continually reduced the quality of medical care and prevented all physicians from becoming the best they can be. It’s what no one ever explained to you while in medical school.

For some reason, medical school scholars and administrative agencies (AAMC) have a belief that jamming medical training and education that is eventually never used is far more important than enabling all physicians to practice medicine at a much higher level and quality than most medical patients want and need today.

Care to know what the benefits are to physicians with a business education?

1. Physician attrition would cease. Today it is increasing rapidly.

2. Physician burnout would become rare. Today burnout in physicians can be found in varying degrees in all practicing physicians.

3. Physician satisfaction with their careers would skyrocket—today, the increasing cause of physician attrition.

4. Physician satisfaction is the result of knowing that they can finally reach their expectations for their medical careers. They have given up on ones that physicians don’t expect today.

5. Physician satisfaction occurs rapidly when they see and understand how much their business tools add to their practice success—have the income to magnify their skills and medical knowledge throughout their medical practice careers—which is not possible today.

6. Medical doctors will have an unrestricted (affordable) path to funding retirement plans, sending kids to good colleges, meeting family financial obligations, and confidence that expends their medical practice quality—all of which are not available to most physicians today.

7. Recruiting medical students would not be a problem—as it is today.

8. Physicians would stay in clinical medical practice much longer and retire much later, if at all—unlike the opposite occurring today.

9. Our government would be prevented from gaining control of health care and the medical profession itself—which is exactly what they have been trying to do for the last seven decades.

10. Despite political intentions, efforts to introduce socialized medicine into our society would be prevented.

11. The quality of our health care would increase to record levels—instead of decreasing as it is today and for the last hundred years—and is camouflaged today only because of the increase in medical technology and physicians’ lack of appropriate business knowledge.

12. Medical school recruitment would become much easier to accomplish because becoming a physician will become a high priority for college-planned careers—when they realize that the medical school education provides a business education that enables them to reach their ultimate goals in life—instead of compromising their medical careers today without a business education.

13. A business education not only inspires and enables all physicians to earn the level of income they choose to have any time they want it. It also provides them with a business education that highly qualifies them for almost any other occupation and options outside of the medical profession as a backup should they find themselves outside the medical profession for one reason or another—contrary to the usual circumstances they are in today.

14. Patient-medical doctor rapport would rise to a level again when medical patients would have significantly more trust in their physician or other physicians—contrary to the lack of respect and rapport they have with most physicians today. The impetus for this rises out of the ability of all physicians to implement business tools for earning their income instead of being forced to earn that income the only way they can today, by increasing the number of patients they see every day in the office.

15. There are two factors that produce the success of any medical practice office business. Marketing the practice business to insure a constant and increasing flow of new patients and business management that provides the efficiency, productivity, persistence, profitability, and customer service that patients recognize happens when the physician creating that atmosphere also does the same with their treatment of their medical patients.

This scenario rarely happens without a physician’s business education. Additionally, this is how every physician can see and treat an increasing number of patients they must have and treat to earn the income they need or want. Profit level equates to the number of medical patients seen daily.

Curtis G. Graham is a physician.

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