Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Primary care physician Jerina Gani discusses their article “The hidden rewards of a primary care career.” Jerina challenges the common narrative that general practice is merely a stepping stone filled with paperwork and low wages. She explains how physicians can unlock scalable income and schedule flexibility to build a prosperous career in health care without sacrificing personal well-being. The conversation explores the profound emotional value of generational trust and the privilege of guiding patients through vulnerable life moments. Jerina urges medical students to look beyond the prestige of high-tech specialties to find the enduring impact of treating the whole person. Discover how a shift in perspective can transform a demanding profession into a deeply fulfilling calling.

Partner with me on the KevinMD platform. With over three million monthly readers and half a million social media followers, I give you direct access to the doctors and patients who matter most. Whether you need a sponsored article, email campaign, video interview, or a spot right here on the podcast, I offer the trusted space your brand deserves to be heard. Let’s work together to tell your story.

PARTNER WITH KEVINMD → https://kevinmd.com/influencer

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast

RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today we welcome back Jerina Gani. She is a primary care physician. Today’s KevinMD article is “The hidden rewards of a primary care career.” Jerina, welcome back to the show.

Jerina Gani: Thank you. It is a privilege to be here and an honor. Thank you.

Kevin Pho: All right, so tell us what your latest article is about.

Jerina Gani: The latest article is about the pleasure of me being in primary care in the last few years. I had another podcast with you, and I really enjoyed everything. Thank you for sharing that with the rest of the providers all over the United States. This one has to do with the fact that I am enjoying it more than before. I have been a primary care physician for 20 years now, but the last few years have been different because of the way I designed my clinic time. The title is “The overlooked treasures of primary care.” People are going to think there isn’t any treasure in primary care. I think there is a lot of treasure in primary care, and I can explain why this field is more rewarding than most people realize. That is the title, and that is the way I feel. If you want me to go ahead and explain this, I will be happy to.

Kevin Pho: All right. So yeah, I am a primary care physician myself, as everyone knows. I do internal medicine. I see patients the first half of the week, and I interview so many doctors who are burned out. They say that there are so many obstacles in our primary care system like pre-authorizations and bureaucratic paperwork. There is a loss of autonomy in primary care, and medical students listen to that and wonder why anyone would go into primary care in the first place. So it is refreshing to hear your story and read your article about some of the treasures of primary care. So tell us some of the things that we may not know about primary care.

Jerina Gani: I totally agree. Primary care is busy. It is complicated. There are a lot of things going on in primary care. There are concerning things because not many people help us, but we have to be the CEO of our own care and the CEO of our own job as a physician or clinician. So if we do that and organize our time the right way and organize our day the right way, primary care is amazing. We can concentrate on the problems, all these labs and tests and stuff, or we can concentrate as well on the wonderful things we get from primary care on a day-to-day basis dealing with people.

So these are the rewards I want to explain: the hidden rewards that primary care has. The first thing is financial. There are so many subspecialties out there, and medical students especially don’t want to go to primary care because I feel like it is not financially rewarding. There is not much money in primary care. They ask why not go be a subspecialist if they studied so many years so they will make more money. I think primary care has a lot of potential, even financially, and I have seen that myself.

I have been working 20 years in primary care. The first 16 years, I was working full-time seeing patients every 20 minutes. It was very, very tiresome. Even on the weekends, I was working. In the last three and a half years, I organized my life very differently. So now I see patients every half an hour, only three days a week. So I see 16 patients in a day in primary care. By doing that, I have so much time with every patient. I have time to talk to them and not only to deal with their medical issues. Even five minutes on every visit having that human touch, a little story from their life or exchanging what is going on, is so rewarding and fulfilling. It regenerates me as a doctor, believe it or not, because I am learning from them too.

I am talking here even with nurse practitioners or physician associates who are now clinicians and have their own panel. It is very rewarding that way and financially too. I have realized by working three days and seeing patients every half an hour, I have so much time to document everything I do. By documenting and asking all the questions medically on patients and resolving as many medical issues as they have, I am billing a lot better now. By billing better, I am reimbursed a lot better. So I am reimbursed for all the work I do, and I realize that in three days I make more money than working full-time. It is very strange, but that is the way it is going on. I shared this in my online course regarding the hidden rewards.

Emotional rewards are unbelievable. We have generations of people. We see the grandparents, we see the parents, and we see their children. Especially when you are with these patients for over 10 years, which I have been, I know every little bit of their story. It is so amazing when you see the grandparent and then they tell you that they had the wedding of the grandchild, who is also your patient. They share that moment and I ask them to show me some pictures. Only those moments I spend with them regarding this make me feel so good. It makes me feel so wonderful.

Another thing is that I practice in Massachusetts. We have a lot of people from all over the world, and I am an immigrant myself. I came to the United States 30 years ago. I am so amazed with the experience I get from people all over the world who came here and share their story. They came from South Africa, South America, Europe, you name it. In one moment, when I get into my office, I always tell them in the exam room: “Think for a moment that you are sitting in my living room.” We are going to discuss all the medical issues, but we can share a little story there.

Before I get in, because I prepare my notes and I know who is coming, and since I have such good relations with them, my schedule is always full. So I know who is coming the next day. When I get into that exam room, I think for a moment: “Oh, now I am talking to somebody who is from Africa. How wonderful. So let me find something out about what’s going on in that country.” Even if you ask for a few minutes, they tell you what is going on. It is so amazing that they are here and thankful. Oh, the next one is from South America. Oh, this is an American with generations here. So I ask about things. Sometimes I tease them about languages because being a foreigner, I know several languages. I like to learn more if I can. So I tell them it is good for their memory too, and it helps. I can go on and on forever. But it is really amazing. I don’t know how to explain it. I am getting a little emotional even talking about this. I don’t mind being emotional, but it is a wonderful emotional reward in primary care.

So financial fulfillment is out there. You have to just be organized. If you organize yourself right and if you bill correctly, there are plenty of opportunities because in primary care, people come with many issues. You are not discussing only the heart. You are discussing whatever they have. The more you discuss up to a certain point, the more you get reimbursed. You have to know how to document correctly, but there are plenty of opportunities for making a great financial impact on your salary that way.

So these are the main things I wanted to discuss. I think that my life now is so balanced. The work-life balance is amazing. I work three days very hard. But working hard in these three days and putting these moments of emotional touch in regenerates me so I do not feel as tired.

Another thing that I added which I can share with the audience is that I have always been a hugger. I have a lot of old ladies who live alone and other patients. Especially since after COVID, we have been very distanced from people. We put that mask on and then we stay away because God forbid something will happen. I never felt that way. Even when I had the mask on, if the patient didn’t have any symptoms, I went ahead and hugged that old lady because she lives alone and she needs that. It helped them so much. It helped me so much. Sometimes before I leave the exam room, I hear an old lady saying to me: “Where are you going?” I turn back and think I forgot something. She is like: “You forgot to hug me.” So I go back and hug her. It is wonderful. It is such a great feeling. I read once a Harvard study that said if you have eight good hugs a day, you live longer. So I tell patients they can hug whoever the loved ones they have are. Don’t forget to do that. It is wonderful.

Kevin Pho: I think that I definitely feel the same as you when it comes to those long-term relationships. I have been in the same practice for 23, almost 24 years now, and a lot of patients that I see from the very beginning when I first came out of residency are still with me today. I always like to joke with them that we are both still here, so hopefully we are both doing something right. So that is definitely one of the joys I feel for primary care.

You mentioned that your schedule was like 16 to 17 patients, three days a week. You get a half-hour with each patient. But that is not the schedule of every primary care doctor. You hear stories of primary care doctors who work for hospital systems who just pile on more patients every 15 minutes. They have to see 30 patients a day. What message do you have for those primary care physicians who may not have the schedule that you described?

Jerina Gani: You know, you have to look for that schedule. Nobody gave me that schedule to begin with. You have to ask for it. You have to advocate for yourself in a nice way wherever you are. Now since I have this online course and I am talking to physicians and clinicians all over the United States and I really enjoy sharing the experience with them, I had a phone call with the administrator of a clinic the other day. She was interested. She saw my thing and she asked: “How come you’re doing this? How did you reach this point that you can see patients every half an hour?”

I told her that financial rewards are better for me and for the clinic because I am working better, I am reimbursed better, and they are getting better reimbursement. She was like: “Oh, this is interesting.” So even the hospitals and the clinics and the management may be open-minded if you discuss this and you realize that by having longer visit times for every patient, you can bill better, you can document better, and you can do that prevention which is so important.

So everybody is happy. The doctor is happy, the clinic is happy, and the patient is very happy because she doesn’t have to come for just one problem. Patients are busy. We are patients too somewhere. They are busy. They are not going to come just for sinusitis and go away. They have to take a day off or take the time off to come and see the doctor. So if you can accommodate them doing more in that visit, they will be extremely happy. And you will be happy too because you are going to get better reimbursed and the clinic will be happy because they will get better money too.

So I think it is all about communicating. I don’t know why clinicians are afraid of communicating this with their own management. I don’t know why they have to kill themselves like I was doing for 16 years. I wish I knew this before. You are going to say maybe my clinic was that open-minded and gave me the chance. But we are RVU-based. So they said to me at the beginning, like everywhere else, that if you work three days, we are going to adjust your salary by decreasing it at the beginning because they didn’t know how much I would bring in for 16 patients a day. Then my salary jumped high. It increased so much after six months when they calculated it that they were surprised too. So you have to try. You have to see what works for you as a clinician because I think each one of us is a CEO of their own life and CEO of their own work. If you don’t advocate for yourself, who is going to do it?

Kevin Pho: You mentioned billing a few times and RVU-based productivity, and that is how a lot of physicians are paid. I am sure that you see this yourself. A lot of physicians simply don’t know how to bill and they leave a lot of money on the table. And like you said, if you spend time with patients, you can bill for time. You can bill for a higher code if you address more issues in that visit. So in order to achieve the schedule that you describe and some of that satisfaction that you express here, it is really imperative for physicians to really know how to bill correctly.

Jerina Gani: I totally agree because I learned so much about billing before I did this. I have a master’s degree in health service management that helped me, but I also independently learned about billing. Billing is very important. You cannot leave it to the billing department because there are people who bill who are doing that job automatically all the time, and they don’t know what you did with your patient. They will base everything on what you document. If you are tired and you don’t know what you are documenting, because you may talk half an hour with somebody but if you don’t document the right things in the note, they don’t know what they are going to bill. They are going to bill lower. If you know about billing, you know how to document correctly. This is exactly what the online course I have created is for: billing and for satisfaction in primary care to maximize every patient visit. You have to maximize it. You owe that to yourself for all the hard work you do.

Kevin Pho: So you mentioned of course your online course, but there are a lot of free resources as well in terms of exactly how physicians can bill. You could go to the American Academy of Family Physicians, you go to ACP, and I think that they have a lot of resources in terms of teaching physicians how to bill correctly because this isn’t anything that they typically learn during residency.

Jerina Gani: I totally agree with you. There are so many free resources out there. If you use them the right way, you will be surprised how happy you will be with billing correctly, documenting correctly, and having more time. If you do that right, you have a few minutes in every visit to talk humanly with your patient and enjoy your primary care.

Kevin Pho: We talked about earlier the medical students who may be listening to you now, and they think that primary care doesn’t have the prestige in contrast with some of the other subspecialties. What would you say to those medical students who don’t think primary care has enough prestige?

Jerina Gani: You know, I can share my story. When I finished my residency training, I got an offer for a cardiology subspecialty, and I turned it down. I really love the connection with patients. I really love this, and you can get this only in primary care. If I became a cardiologist, maybe at the beginning I would make more money, but I wouldn’t talk to the patient for every problem they had. I would talk only for the heart, and they would come only when they had a heart issue. They would not come to see me all the time and I would lose that connection with them. I always loved this and I was from the beginning very certain that I would continue with primary care.

At the beginning, primary care was hard. I am not saying it was easy because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know about billing. I was overwhelmed with the whole work. But now that I organized everything these past three or four years, I really enjoy primary care so much, and I am so glad I chose this direction.

I spoke with another doctor the other day who came from another country. He was a primary care doctor there for many years, and now he is doing residency training and is thinking of going to be a hospitalist or doing a subspecialty because everybody tells him not to go to primary care. He was sharing with me the connection he had with his patients back home, not in the United States. I told him: “But listen, I have the same connection here and even more because I see people from all over the world.” Not only from my own country, Albania, where I come from, but from all over the world. So this is ten times more rewarding if you have time. He was surprised. He was like: “Wow, you convinced me. I am going to go to primary care.” So I think if medical students listen to this, primary care is amazing. But you have to have the desire to talk and connect with patients. If you are a people person, this is the place to be.

Kevin Pho: We are talking to Jerina Gani. She is a primary care physician. Today’s KevinMD article is “The hidden rewards of a primary care career.” Jerina, let’s have some take-home messages that you want to leave with a KevinMD audience.

Jerina Gani: I would wish and love for every primary care clinician to reach the right work-life balance by working fewer days and earning more whatever they deserve so they can use the free time they have on the days that they don’t work for everything their heart desires. When I started working only three days in the clinic instead of seven days a week, and then on the days that I am off I work only a couple of hours to prepare and to check the labs and tests, I had so much free time. Especially the weekends were totally mine. I was like: “What am I going to do with all this time? How come I had all this time? I could have had all this time before and I never thought about it.”

I started doing a lot of other things, like learning more languages through Duolingo and even learning a little bit about training. There were so many things that I never did like meditation and doing Pilates. I even created this course for primary care providers that I am talking about. So it is amazing how much time you will have in your hand and how much your life will be enriched if you do this. You owe it to yourself. You have to enjoy your life, not only take care of other people.

Kevin Pho: Jerina, thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and insight, and thanks again for coming back on the show.

Jerina Gani: It is my pleasure. Thank you.