Entrepreneurial Fever

Entrepreneur, noun -- A person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.



The Entrepreneur Lounge sounded like a great idea, however, on the Saturday morning of my first meeting I really did not want to drive the hour to get there. The problem is that entrepreneurial fever grips you and it does not let you go. Meeting like-minded individuals who share their ideas, dreams, plans, results, failures, and motivations for running their own enterprises is stimulating. The meeting was great. It was time well spent and as a goal setting exercise I want to supply my introductory post to this blog.



In my professional life, as a physician and consultant I have been a part of several businesses in the medical economy. These businesses have been a variety of medical practices or consulting services spread geographically from the Southeast to Southwest USA, functioning in both the private and the not-for-profit sector. I have been, at different times, an employee, partner, director, consultant, and founder-partner-owner all wrapped into one. These businesses have all created gainful employment for me and for others. Having a job is good; owning and operating a business that leverages more than just the entrepreneur’s subject matter skills is even better. This sort of business, once started, supplies a service and employment for many and is a dream of mine.



My medical training came first in my career, with business skills being learned on the job and finally followed by my UGA Terry MBA education. The tools of an MBA degree teach you how to structure a business for its continued success. The medical economy is big, sophisticated in the care delivered, yet in many settings remains remarkably primitive in its business systems. Improved services can be created and must be well thought out as life and death outcomes rely on these innovations. I have some ideas formulated into different stages of plans for some of the business needs in the medical economy.



Idea one. Create a service for online appointment scheduling so that patients can be one click away from their own physician. Yes, the technology exists today. The challenge is figuring out how to get everyone what he or she needs from this systemic improvement.



Idea two. Offer a litigation risk management service that both quantifies and avoids these business risks. In high-risk medical specialties such as Orthopedics, Neurosurgery, Obstetrics, Interventional radiology and Transplant Surgery medical liability suits are a common experience. Both sides of this litigation action are well served by plaintiff and defense attorneys. A need not met is an accurate assessment of the business outcomes for all of the parties to the lawsuit. This service would be valuable to plaintiffs, the physician defendants, their attorneys and the medical liability insurance carriers.