Building a Successful Practice - with PAs
Wyoming physician Kurt Hunter wrote an article for Medical Economics titled, "How I build a successful medical practice in under seven years."
Four PAs are a huge part of Hunter's practice.
Instead, I added midlevel providers. I hired a PA, an excellent clinician with more than 10 years of experience who was also well-liked. I was somewhat concerned about being able to cover his salary and benefits (I offered full health insurance, a retirement plan, and vacation pay from the start.)
However, he brought thousands of patients with him from his previous supervising physician, who was having licensing problems. Our practice doubled in size, almost overnight. We continued to add still more new patients, and I added another PA two years later.
I quickly realized that we needed more physician assistants to see patients, but the Wyoming Board of Medicine allowed no more than two PAs per physician. So we helped introduce a law to change the limit to four. We argued that the shortage of primary care providers in rural communities warranted the change. The bill that ultimately passed increased the number to three, and I hired a third—the first female PA in the practice—a year later. This offered an alternative desired by many women, and the practice grew even more.
About a year later, I petitioned the Wyoming Board of Medicine for an exception to hire a fourth PA, based on the same argument. This was granted. I hired a part-time PA, who initially worked 20 hours per week and now works full time.
I offer my PAs an incentive of 50 percent of collections to cover Saturdays. This enables us to offer full Saturday coverage to compete with the hospital emergency department and local urgent care facility.
At the end of the article, Hunter lists seven steps to success. No. 4 is "Hired PAs" and No. 7 is "Offered incentives to PAs to cover weekend hours to compete with clinics and the hospital ED."
Link