Win-Win-Win

You practice medicine because it was a calling. Inherent in practicing medicine is helping and serving others. And because you care so deeply you often can get caught up in prioritizing your patients before yourself. This can be in the form of giving discounts that aren’t sustainable to your bottom line, accepting low-paying insurance reimbursement, rearranging your schedule to accommodate your patients’ availability, maintaining product or service offerings that create more work for you and deliver meager returns, holding high overhead expenses because you think your patients will like the little extras you offer, waiting to see what’s left over at the end of the month before paying yourself, etc. All the while you’re exhausted, resentful, and defeated.

It’s admirable to want to bend over backwards for your patients. But a doctor-patient relationship is one that requires mutual effort and engagement. And it should never involve the sacrifice of your own needs nor keep you on the brink of going out of business.

All of your decisions in business and in life should be based on a win-win-win approach. A win for your patients, your community/society, and YOU. Because without you, the other two can’t win. If you go down, everyone loses.