Hello all,
As I am approaching 60, I am looking to tone down the intensity of my work. I have a popular and financially successful practice of 14 years in a sweet town in southern Vermont. I would love to pass it to someone and not leave my patients in the lurch. Is there anyone out there looking for a turnkey micro practice or have ideas about other ways to get the word out? I have included details below.
With thanks,
Avery Wood
Our practice is Wood and Hearst MD in North Bennington, VT. I am not planning to retire but to shift to some more circumscribed work. My medical partner is 10 years my senior and will be wanting to retire in the not too distant future. Technically, he works as a sub contractor for the practice. We have just over 1000 patients. We are about 30% VT medicaid which pays PCPs pretty well, 30% medicare, 30% BCBS and 10 % other privates. Since I stopped delivering 14 years ago, my pediatric population is dwindling. We do some home visits, some nursing home work, but use the very competent hospitalist service at our excellent local hospital, SVMC, which is 5 miles away in Bennington. We are part of OneCare Vermont, Vermont’s ACO, and through them we are about 30% capitated which has been very helpful through the pandemic. We are a PCMH which provides some subsidy of my nurse’s salary. There is great demand for PCPs here but I have not taken any significant number of new folks on for years. Patients are accustomed to supporting their own care with an active patient portal, on line self scheduling and a morning walk-in time. We take our own call unless on vacation and calls are rare. We have an awesome full time nurse and several folks who help out with billing, filing, bookkeeping, and IT a couple hours a week. I rent our small office and the stuff in it could be passed on at a very small cost.
Running the office and caring for folks has been a lot of work. It has paid me better that when I was in a group private practice but not as well as if I were employed (and not so well during the pandemic.) What this office has enabled me to do is practice on my own terms so that I feel satisfied that I have provided excellent care to my folks over these years. I have been able to do so while enjoying ample family vacations and almost never missing any of my children’s events. If someone were to take it on, I would be around for transition support and vacation coverage. Please feel free to contact me directly at my home email nedandavery@comcast.net.
