GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers
Physician entrepreneurship, the pursuit of opportunity with scarce resources under conditions of uncertainty with the goal of creating user defined value through the deployment of product, process and policy innovation using a VAST business model, has gone mainstream.
Many erroneously think that innovation is just about about products and services. In fact, there are many other ways to create something new or something old in a new way, most commonly business models, processes, experience or delivery channels.
The other common misconception is entrepreneurship is exclusively about creating a company.
Like most , physician entrepreneurs do it primarily to help patients and create patient defined value.. In part , they do it to generate a profit. Some , social entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, have other motivations. It seems profiting from biomedical and clinical innovation rubs some people the wrong way, who consider the entire enterprise as immoral profiteering. When doctors and other members of the biomedical industrial complex put profits ahead of patients, the conclusion is justified.
There are many reasons why people fear physician entrepreneurs:
1. Because they are afraid they will place the profit motive above patient interests.
2. Because they don’t trust “business people” and, when it comes to medicine, “money is dirty” and the root of all evil.
3. Because they think entrepreneurship is about creating a business.
4. Because they think entrepreneurs are dishonest.
5 Because they think it corrupts the professionalism of medicine and encourages conflicts of interest.
6. Because they think it attracts the wrong kind of person into medicine.
7. Because they think it is a waste of a medical school education and has no place in the curriculum.
8. Because they are fed up with “high priced suits” who don’t add value ripping off the system.
9. Because they don’t think doctors can do both and should stick to medicine.
10. Because they think doctors are innately lousy business people and should just pay attention to taking care of patients.
Outsiders from around the world, particularly those who live or come from a country with a single payer, universal system, scratch their heads in amazement at the costs and “immorality’ of the US system and , when painting it with the broad brush of criticism, indict physician entrepreneurs and those like them with the same stroke.
About 20% of US consumer spending is on sickcare and is expected to continue rising. Angry patients who are paying more and more despite their insurance think greedy doctors are the problem. Others point to drug companies, politician and payers as the culprits. Patients don’t think they have much to do with budget busting sick care spending and costs and instead are the victims of a capitalistic ethos that has no place in medicine. While patients trust their doctors, admittedly less and less, they overwhelmingly distrust “the system” and the parts that make it.
For physician entrepreneurs, the challenge is to reconcile the ethics of business with the ethics of medicine by practicing compassionate capitalism. Critics are justified in exposing those who violate that social contract that places the interests of patients first and profits second. Beyond that, marginalizing and stigmatizing physician entrepreneurs is unjustified and will interfere with us innovating our way out of the US sick care mess.
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