Talk to physicians in private medical practice today, and you will discover that they will affirm that their medical practice is financially satisfactory, stable, and doing well financially.

Private practicing physicians know that they have no measurable standard to use to verify what they just told you except for their profit and loss statements from their CPA. And even if they believed they could be in a much better position financially, they have no essential and reliable business knowledge about what to do about it — except to work harder and recruit more new patients (by marketing knowledge they have never been taught).

Ask why private medical practice is disappearing.

The obvious reason is that private practice physicians have had to battle with earning a large enough chunk of their gross income to implement some affordable means to attract more medical patients throughout the rest of their medical practice careers, not just intermittently.

Secondly, physicians already in private practice eventually recognize that they must first attain a level of effective medical practice management. Both marketing efforts and practice management must work together–each by itself usually fails.

Thirdly, hundreds of private-practice physicians are being forced out of their practices for lack of enough income. Perhaps you haven’t heard about that tragedy that has been a challenge for private practice physicians for decades.

The guilt they feel about having done something wrong in their “experiential” management of their practices without ever discovering what the cause was, forces them to keep the problem secret from their peers, even their own family, and they learn to tolerate the consequences unnecessarily for their whole careers.

Of course, none of these unfortunate medical doctors lose their practices because of their mistakes. For decades, our medical schools have avoided explaining business education’s benefits to medical students. Why? Medical schools only recently are starting to notice the truth about the need for all medical students (about 22,000 graduates annually) to receive a business education. Thus, one must ask, who is responsible for that neglect?

Why have medical school education administrators and scholars continued to deny responsibility for providing business education to
medical students?

Such responsible people, knowing that about 50 percent of medical school graduates will be starting private medical practice businesses, expect those new physicians to create their medical practice business systems for their new practices.

This century-old tragedy has persisted and has been allowed to continue without any academic business education being offered, provided, or recommended.

Under this egregious set of predictable consequences, physicians are expected to create, sustain, grow and successfully maintain their” trial-and-error” style of medical practice business profitability for the rest of their medical careers, intentionally obstructive as well as abusive to medical students and physicians.

Weeding out and replacing the causes and sources that have introduced large numbers of medical students to the myth “that all physicians do not need a business education to practice medicine” is an absolute requirement if private medical practice is to survive in our nation.

So, one must ask: Why is it that 274 accredited medical schools in the U.S. have never provided or even offered a business education for medical students for the last century? Why do medical education administrators hide this from all medical students?

The AAMC creates the curriculums for medical schools in the USA. It also rejects all challenges made to adding a business education curriculum to medical school education.

Medical practice is a serious business and functions under the same rules and standards applicable to all businesses in the world. All business owners across our nation who own and manage a successful business inherently understand the standards required for their business success. Any business success requires a solid knowledge of business management and marketing.

The reason that nearly all physicians today in private medical practice have been struggling with financial problems, incomes far lower than they had expected, and increasingly are subjected to burnout, loss of their private practices, incomplete retirement funding, inability to meet their family financial obligations such as their kids’ college educations and other practice disappointments is a direct result of the lack of business education.

Why isn’t there a nationwide protest by new medical students for business education?

Likely, it’s because American college students are no longer applying to our medical schools. Did you know that?

Rejection of all efforts to implement business education curricula into medical schools is an outrageous and catastrophic disrespect for and failure of every physician’s lack of reaching their ultimate potential in medical practice careers. The real-life symptoms of this neglect have spread nationwide among physicians, including employed physicians.

Oh, you never recognized that new medical doctors often leave a community within a year or so of arriving. This isn’t because they were dumb and unliked physicians but because they were business ignorant. Add to that all the competent and well-liked physicians who have practiced for years in the community up and leave suddenly and without notice.

The astounding part is that the AAMC and its members see what’s happening and refuse to do anything about correcting such an obvious medical career-destroying timebomb. This action strongly suggests to me that they are co-joined in our government’s push for socialized medicine.

It’s like that deep state of the medical profession and health care developing a secret plan to force all physicians into government-controlled medical facilities — at least, that’s where about 50 percent of graduating medical students are headed.

Some attention must be given to the fact that it is known that the academic curriculum scheduling must be approved by our government, according to the AAMC. Yes, it’s just further proof that our government is also taking control of health care and the medical profession.

The aged medical education scholars making these decisions are quite likely to have never had a formal academic business education in their life yet feel that they are without error concerning the prevention of business education in medical school curriculums. Could there be a bit of cognitive dissonance happening here?

Curtis G. Graham is a physician.

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