Freelance MD Authors On Twitter

These days, social (and professional) networks extend beyond a single web site.

Freelance MD's physician community has a home here on this site, but we've got our tentacles entwined around a number of other networs as well. There's a Freelance MD LinkedIn group, Facebook fan page (a group will be coming soon there as well), and of course a feed on Twitter.

In fact, we've aggregated all of the authors who have twitter feeds into a single stream that you can access to get all of the authors posts in a single feed.

Combined Author Feed: http://twitter.com/#!/list/FreelanceMD/freelance-md-authors

Print MD - Medical Marketing As A Side Business

Building a side business that utilizes your domain expertise and scales.

Print MD.net is a side business that I've built  to address a very specific need for medical spas and cosmetic practices: how to handle direct mail and marketing with professional design that doesn't break the bank.

Print MD.net is designed to do just that. It's a site where a plastic surgeon or cosmetic practice can get everything they need, from postcards, business cards, appointment cards and posters, all professionaly created and integrated into 'campaigns'.

View the current campaigns

The emphasis on a virtical niche that I have a lot of domain expertise in means that we can offer business cards, posters, referral and appointment cards that all match, ensure the highest quality design and printing, and give a price break. Nice.

Oh, and you can enter your own copy, address and even upload your logo to customize your marketing materials just the way you want. Click here for a demo.

The business end of this is a focus on using technology that scales. A cosmetic practice can now access custom design and professional copywriting for 20% of what it would cost them to produce it and they have the additional benefit of small, on-demand orders. So what if another clinic in another state has the same postcard...

This business model is possible because a typical design agency or print shop has to offer everything, has some hefty overhead costs and is constrained by geography, an online product isn't limited by those constraints. Better yet, there's no additional cost for additional sales.

Of course, developing this kind of side business does come with some risk. All of the effort and much of the cost is invested on the front end so if you build something that no one wants, you're SOL.

In this case, I've combined my own domain expertise in cosmetic medicine with my resources around design, copywriting, and marketing. Since I own a cosmetic medical community (Medical Spa MD), an advertising agency (Wild Blue) and some familiarity with markeing and sales, I'm pretty comfortable that this business will be part of a collective win.

With PrintMD.net, I've designed the operations so that I am able to direct the business without working 'in' the business. All of the fulfillment, customer service, payment transactions and the rest are completely outsourced and it won't matter if the business takes a while to begin to turn a profit.

Since I'll be learing just a much from what doesn't sell as what does, I'll be able to quickly itterate and change direction. If there's a new product that I think may do well, I'll have a platfrom that I can test it with and make a determination to keep, dump or modify it quickly. Since I've developed this business on the side, it's effect is cumulative and I have enough control that I can tweak it constantly.

Of course this isn't the first business that I've started and it certainly won't be the last. The cumulative effect is that I've developed a process that allows me to create value that doesn't require a constant exchange of time for money. Instead, I invest at the beginning. It's only by detemining how the market is reacting to our business that you can make informed decisions. When you start a business of any kind, you'll hear lots of praise about what a great idea it is. It's only when people part with cash for your product or services that you'll know you're on to something.

Businesses always come with costs, even if it's only opportunity cost. So, if you're going to fail, fail fast.

If you're a physician that's looking to build revenue and income from businesses, services and products outside of your clinical practice, we'll be here to help.

Interview On Biomedical Entrepreneurism

Here's an interview with Arlen D Meyers MD from Kings College London.

I embedded them in this post but they automatically play on load so I've opted to provide just the links below. As you may well know, Dr. Meyers is one of Freelance MDs writers. You can read all of Dr. Meyers posts here.

• Video 1
• Video 2

Turning Stumbling Blocks Into Stepping Stones

By Yvonne Thornton, MD

Since the age of eight, I have wanted to be an obstetrician, delivering babies. Being an author was not in my consciousness as a young woman. However, the journey to write a book came from my mother’s request to write a book about our family. The seed was innocently planted when I was an OB/GYN resident, during a conversation with my mother. She told me that all she wanted was to have our story told in a book that would be in the library. She wanted to let the world know that with education, focus and determination, how her little “nappy-headed” daughters from the housing projects became successful independent women of whom she was so proud. When my mother told me her request, I was somewhat taken aback because I wasn’t a writer. I delivered babies for a living. I told her that I had little time to sleep much less to write a book. However, after she died, my mother’s wish became my quest, my obsession, my new goal in life.

I had the story. I just needed someone with the right skill and temperament to help me write my story.  It wasn’t easy. It took me 18 years to find a collaborative writer and get my first book published!!  I searched for years to find the right person who had substance, writing talent and an insight about the struggles of my parents. Writer after writer came and went. Either they wanted an enormous amount of money to help me write a book or their writing skills and temperament were not suited to write the kind of book I wanted written. One day, I saw a reference in The New York Times to the American Society of Journalists and Authors and its Dial-a-Writer service. Dorothy Beach, who ran the service, put me in touch with one writer who had too many assignments to take on another, a second writer who wanted a year’s salary in advance, and a third writer who said she wasn’t interested in writing a book but thought the Reader’s Digest might want to run an article about the family. That writer was Jo Coudert. Ironically, Jo Coudert had authored my husband’s favorite book, Advice from a Failure.

I had finally found the writer I knew could do justice to my parents’ story, but she wasn’t interested. I was relentless. Once or twice a year for the next five years, I would call Jo to ask if she might possibly change her mind about writing the Thornton story as a book. Jo was as resolute as I was persistent. However, after several years of convincing her to help me, she finally capitulated.

Jo and I began meeting all day every Saturday, Jo making notes and taping, while I retold the story of the ditchdigger’s daughters: how we were born and grew and were molded into becoming successes by a father who labored at two jobs and a mother who cleaned houses. With the book outline and representative chapters in hand, our literary agent approached many publishers. To our chagrin, no one wanted to publish the book. The publishers said it wasn’t marketable because the book had no conflict. But persistence does prevail and a small publishing house in New York did take a chance and The Ditchdigger’s Daughters was published in 1995. The book has never been out of print, was condensed by the Reader’s Digest, translated into 19 languages and was adapted into an award-winning telefilm for cable television.

My new memoir, SOMETHING TO PROVE takes a closer look at my nuclear family, my struggles and the life lessons I have learned throughout my years as a physician, a wife, a mother and a woman. This second memoir continues the saga of my journey in medicine and was written to serve as a roadmap for young professional women who need to balance their careers with managing a household and raising children.  The book takes a sharp look at the hierarchy of academic medicine, misogyny and racial prejudice in the working world. But more than just telling my story, SOMETHING TO PROVE speaks to women, young and old, of all races and socio-economic status, giving them dynamic messages of empowerment, and the courage to face the pitfalls that so often pop up along their own personal roads to success. With each chapter opening with the wise sayings of my father, I try to be faithful to the memory of my parents; in that the inspiring lessons they taught me would not stop with me, but would touch the lives of my children and all those I have touched. 

About the author: Dr. Thornton is a double Board-certified perinatal consultant in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine. She is a Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Thornton blogs at PagingDrThornton.com

Submit a guest post and be heard.

AMA Policy: Medical Professionalism & Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogging & Physicians

A new policy on professionalism in the use of social media was adopted at the November 8th 2010 meeting of the American Medical Association. These basic guidelines represent one of the first steps by a major American physician organization to offer guidance in the appropriate use of social/new media.

It's pretty generic and basic stuff but it does recognize that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and other social networks are destined to become intimately intertwined with medicine.

The Internet has created the ability for medical students and physicians to communicate and share information quickly and to reach millions of people easily.  Participating in social networking and other similar Internet opportunities can support physicians’ personal expression, enable individual physicians to have a professional presence online, foster collegiality and camaraderie within the profession, provide opportunity to widely disseminate public health messages and other health communication.  Social networks, blogs, and other forms of communication online also create new challenges to the patient-physician relationship.  Physicians should weigh a number of considerations when maintaining a presence online:

(a)  Physicians should be cognizant of standards of patient privacy and confidentiality that must be maintained in all environments, including online, and must refrain from posting identifiable patient information online.

(b)  When using the Internet for social networking, physicians should use privacy settings to safeguard personal information and content to the extent possible, but should realize that privacy settings are not absolute and that once on the Internet, content is likely there permanently.  Thus, physicians should routinely monitor their own Internet presence to ensure that the personal and professional information on their own sites and, to the extent possible, content posted about them by others, is accurate and appropriate.

(c)  If they interact with patients on the Internet, physicians must maintain appropriate boundaries of the patient-physician relationship in accordance with professional ethical guidelines just, as they would in any other context.

(d)  To maintain appropriate professional boundaries physicians should consider separating personal and professional content online.

(e)  When physicians see content posted by colleagues that appears unprofessional they have a responsibility to bring that content to the attention of the individual, so that he or she can remove it and/or take other appropriate actions.  If the behavior significantly violates professional norms and the individual does not take appropriate action to resolve the situation, the physician should report the matter to appropriate authorities.

(f)  Physicians must recognize that actions online and content posted may negatively affect their reputations among patients and colleagues, may have consequences for their medical careers (particularly for physicians-in-training and medical students), and can undermine public trust in the medical profession.

Of course, Freelance MD is all over social media. Here's just a few of the places that you can 'like' or join other physicians who want intellilgent information.

• Like Freelance MD on Facebook
• Join Freelance MD on LinkedIn
• Follow us on Twitter
• Get Freelance MD post emailed directly to your inbox

Physician Salaries Around The World

Here's what the U.S. Bureau of Labor Services (BLS) report as the average salary of a physician in the US.

In 2008, physicians practicing primary care had total median annual compensation of $186,044, and physicians practicing in medical specialties earned total median annual compensation of $339,738."

Let's look at a few specific specialties, in ascending order:

• General Pediatricians $161,410
• Psychiatrists $163,660
• Family and General Practitioners $168,550
• General Internists $183,990
• Obstetricians and Gynecologists $204,470
• Anesthesiologists $211,750
• Surgeons $219,770

• Physicians and Surgeons, All Other $173,860.

What do doctors in other countries make? Times Article

Source: Congressional Research Service analysis; see notes in table below

In response to Uwe Reinhardt’s recent post on “rationing” doctors’ salaries, a number of readers wrote in asking about physician compensation in other countries.

Doing a direct comparison of remuneration across different countries is tricky because the same salary may allow for different standards of living in different places.

But here are two possible ways to think about these comparisons, taken from a 2007 Congressional Research Service report entitled “U.S. Health Care Spending: Comparison with Other OECD Countries.”

One way to compare cross-country data is to adjust the salaries for purchasing-power parity — that is, adjusting the numbers so that $1,000 of salary buys the same amount of goods and services in every country, providing a general sense of a physician’s standard of living in each nation.

These numbers are in the second, fourth and sixth columns of the chart below.

They show that American general practitioners and nurses earn more than their counterparts in other developed countries, and American specialists (insert plastic surgeons & dermatologists) are close to the top of the pack.

Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysis of Remuneration of Health Professions, OECD Health Data 2006 (October 2006), available at [http://www.ecosante. f /OCDEENG/70.html]. Sorted by specialists’ compensation. Amounts are adjusted using U.S. dollar purchasing power parities. Amounts from previous years are trended up to 2004 dollars using the annualized Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Cost Index for wages and salaries of health services workers in private industry. It is not known whether wage growth in health professions in other countries was similar to that in the United States. Amounts are from previous years for 10 countries: data for Australia, Canada, Denmark (for specialists and nurses), Finland (for nurses), and the Netherlands are from 2003; data for Belgium (for specialists), Denmark (for general practitioners), New Zealand (for nurses), and Sweden are from 2002; data for Switzerland and the United States (for specialists and general practitioners) are from 2001; and data for Belgium (for general practitioners) and the United States (for nurses) are from 2000. Ratios of salaries to GDP per capita reflect the year the data was collected and are not adjusted for inflation. For countries that have both self-employed and salaried professionals in a given field, the amount presented here is the higher of the two salaries. Four countries have both salaried and self-employed specialists: the Czech Republic (where compensation is $29,484 for salaried and $34,852 for self-employed specialists), Greece ($67,119 and $64,782), the Netherlands ($130,911 and $252,727), and the United States ($170,300 and $229,500). One country has both salaried and self-employed general practitioners: in the United States, salaried general practitioners earn $134,600, compared with $154,200 if self-employed. All nurses are salaried among this data.

Another way is look at how a doctor’s salary compares to the average national income in that doctor’s country — that is, gross domestic product per capita. These numbers are in the third column, fifth and seventh columns of the chart.

As a country’s wealth rises, so should doctors’ pay. But even accounting for this trend, the United States pays doctors more than its wealth would predict:

Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysis of Remuneration of Health Professions, OECD Health Data 2006 (October 2006), available at [http://www.ecosante.fr/OCDEENG/70.html].

According to this model, the 2007 report says, “The U.S. position above the trendline indicates that specialists are paid approximately $50,000 more than would be predicted by the high U.S. GDP. General practitioners are paid roughly $30,000 more than the U.S. GDP would predict, and nurses are paid $8,000 more.”

But it’s important to keep in mind, the report notes, that health care professionals in other O.E.C.D. countries pay much less (if anything) for their medical educations than do their American counterparts. In other words, doctors and nurses in the rest of the industrialized world start their medical careers with much less student loan debt compared to medical graduates in the United States.

I would also hazzard a guess that malpractice insurance for physicians in the US is multiples of what physicians in other countries need to shoulder.

If anyone has more current stats for physician income in the US I'd love it if you'd leave a link in the comments of this post.

Medical Fusion Conference

The Medical Fusion Conference was held this last weekend in Las Vegas.

A number of the physicians that I've interviewed on the Medical Spa MD Podcast were there as speakers, and a number of physicians that I met at the conference are going to be on the podast.

The Medical Fusion Conference is still relatively small. I think there were less than 100 physicians attending.

(There were a few Medical Spa MD Members that I got to say hello to which was very nice. I didn't come close to going bankrupt with my offer to pay for a month of Frontdesk SEO oursource marketing services which I think of with somewhat mixed blessings.)

I'd attended the conference for a number of reasons; Medical Fusion is a Select Partner for both Freelance MD and Medical Spa MD, I wanted to find out what value the conference held for physicians, and I wanted to guage the reaction of the physicians who attended.

Across the board it was all positive. Every physician I spoke to gave the conference two thumbs up and described it as an excellent overview of potential options in non-clinical medicine that had the wheels spinning.

One of the take-aways was that every physician is looking for what the military world calls 'actionable intelligence', ways to put these strategies and information into action. The result? Freelance MD.