Tim and I are so deeply blessed to be able to work together. For about 20 years our daily work occurred in two places: his at his outpatient clinic location and mine in the endeavor of herding children on their daily adventures. A dozen years ago, though, he made the decision to chuck corporate, large clinic medicine with its myriad of physician administrators, pharmacists, clinic administrators and referral committees to go back to a solo practice. The caveat was that I would be called on to manage the day-to-day business so he could do what he does best -- build relationships with his patients to serve them when his skill was needed and partner with them to keep them healthy.
It was at this point that I could see first-hand what it means to be a physician, and it was a huge education for me trying to manage Tim's schedule with no fund of knowledge. I mean, I could manage my schedule and keep the children on task with theirs, but I had never thought it was rocket science to put a patient on his schedule and it not create a major problem. How difficult could that be? More challenging than it appears.
The number of times I scheduled a patient to be seen, and only allowed 10 minutes for Tim to diagnose and treat "just a sore throat," or "right-sided back pain" is epic. It never occurred to me that a pain in someone's back, or side, or head could be anything more complex than what it is, so it should be a "no-brainer" to be able to quickly come to the conclusion that the patient may only need something simple, say, some over the counter remedy or possibly just rest.
Little did I then understand that each patient who comes to be helped brings a unique blend of health and wellness, the strength of which can, in most cases, be related to lifestyle. From Tim, I have learned that treating a sore throat in an otherwise healthy person is not at all like treating a patient who comes to the clinic with diabetes, hypertension, anxiety, depression or some combination thereof, complaining of the same sore throat. He needs to listen, question, examine and consider treatment options based on the patient's overall health, medications (including supplements) they may be taking, drug allergies and the like -- all of which cannot be done in the span of 10 minutes. Indeed, the major reason he left large group practice was directly related to administratiion's pressure for providers to "push through" as many patients as possible in the course of a day, with the requisite patient paperwork to be completed before leaving the clinic.....and here I was doing the same thing to him.
We clipped along for a year or so, just Tim, Jeannine, me and a medical assistant in one form or another. As the years passed, though, Tim's reputation as a caring, compassionate physician grew and we found ourselves with a many, many patients to help. The push for implementing more technology into the practice, what is now called "health information technology," required additional staff and we soon found ourselves with not only a medical assistant supporting Tim, but another full-time administrator to support me. God is certainly good, because after trial and error we were able to secure an outstanding medical assistant, Danika, as well as bring into the practice our eldest daughter, Mary, to support me.
A primary care practice of around 3500 patients, of which roughly 2000-2500 are actively seeking routine medical care, still requires additional support, so it wasn't long before we were looking for another medical assistant to work with Danika and our physician assistant Maureen.
We advertised, sought recommendations from the technical training schools, used externs, but we were just not able to bring another medical assistant into the fold and have it work out longer than six months. Then we found Andrew, who happens to be Danika's son.
So for what it is worth, our merry little band at Cleary Medical Associates solidified about three years ago. Tim and Maureen of course manage the very clinical direct patient care while Danika and Andrew admirably support them in the back office. Mary's administrative duties cover any and all aspects of front office work, helping me in too many ways to mention here. At the heart of it all, though, is Jeannine. Her value is beyond measure as she manages all of us, patients included. God is certainly good. More later.
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