My name is Mitra Sadhu. I’m a nephrologist in Florida and run a solo lean practice.
It wasn’t a business strategy I had extensively researched prior to launch. It was born of necessity and this is the story of how it came to be.
I worked as an independent contractor for a few years when my children were young. As they grew into school age, I was itching to do more.
I interviewed with some private practices in town (my specialty is probably not lucrative enough for the hospitals to poach, so a hospital-employed position wasn’t in the cards) and quickly figured out that there were two broad directions a private practice job could go in.
I could either work part-time “mommy hours” -which, by the way, was not meant as a compliment- and get paid a heavily discounted wage for that privilege. Or I could work a hundred hours a week and go down the partnership track and get everything that comes along with it, including more hundred hour weeks!
I was not keen on either. I had the audacity to believe that I should not have to choose between some semblance of work-life harmony and a fulfilling career in clinical medicine.
It was then that I realized that I would have to carve out my own solution- that is, start my own practice.
Now, how does one run a practice, in this age of rising costs and falling reimbursements and still work part-time? That was the code I had to crack in order to get this thing running. All while staying within the paradigm of insurance networks- I was not going the cash-based route.
As I grew the practice from scratch to a full panel and learned more than I thought possible, about all things practice management- I began to wonder if what I was doing was feasible for others. Others who were maybe stuck in a toxic environment or burnt out from the grind.
It took some time, but then it dawned upon me that I was taking care of my patients the same way that I would, even if I were in a fancy office with tons of staff hovering around me. In fact, I could argue that I was able to take better care of my patients in this setting, since my overhead was low, I could afford not to play the volume game.
It took a ton of mindset shift- going from feeling inadequate regarding my practice setup- to talking about on the worldwide net.
Then one day, I came across the term “lean”. The guiding principles I was using were also what lean thinking espoused. Lean innovation has been around for decades- widespread across industries the world over.
And Lean Private Practice Solutions was born.
I take the lessons I learn on a daily basis from starting and running a lean practice in hopes that someone reading here will know that there are solutions out there, if only we’re willing to try something different.
Now, if you scroll back, you’ll find a bunch of posts on personal finance in the past. Interestingly, that’s how I had started the blog. Back then, I used to call it Physician Finance Basics. Once I started the practice, I realized nearly all my time and energy was spent learning the ropes of starting and growing the practice. So, I veered the focus of the blog in that direction. And here we are!
Thank you for visiting the site and I hope you find something of value on here.
I’d love to hear from you- shoot me an email at mitra@leanprivatepracticesolutions.com.