Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Recruiting a new doctor

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.

Sounds pretty good. Went to medical school in Burlington. Great state. Too bad your practice has so much M/M in it. Not that they are bad just difficult to switch to an Indeal Medical Practice. That would be optimal and reduce your workload.

Wonder if there are any good ski resorts there. LOL.

Interesting to see this. I drop by every once in a while to see what's happening back in the World. 8 years ago we closed our practice in Alaska, and i tried to get someone to take it. Here was my letter that i posted on this board:

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For some time I have been following the tribulations of the primary care community in the lower 48... hassles, poor reimbursement, desperation even. They make the practice of medicine as most of you experience it sound truly dreadful. So, I have a for-real, honest offer.

My wife/medical partner and I are closing our primary care internal medicine practice in Fairbanks, and have taken positions on Saipan at a publicly funded hospital serving a low income community. We plan to be gone by December. What we are leaving is a practice that makes an almost embarrassing income for us, great patients, a good staff who want to keep working, optional hospital duties, no night calls, and (by our choice) no involvement with meaningful use, and no badly paying contracts. By doing so we are leaving a big hole in the IM outpatient care picture of our community. Our two PA's and we represent about 30% of the outpatient IM slots in the community that has been so kind to us.

And so we want to give it away. Free. All of it. Patients, staff, EHR, office equipment, computer hardware, software, pictures on the walls, pens in the drawers... All of it. Free. All you would need to do is agree to take good care of our patients and staff.

I actually will be surprised if anyone gives this serious thought. For all the complaining and dissatisfaction, our community recruiting experience is that very few people actually want to change their situation. I get that. It is scary. I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Saipan just having announced that I am tossing away the golden goose that has given me both fortune and pleasure for 40 years. But "To discover new lands you must first decide, for a very long time, to lose sight of the shore." If anyone out there is adventurous enough, crazy enough, or desperate enough to give this serious thought, contact me *********

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You want to guess how many people contacted me about this offer?

ZERO!! None!! Nada!!!

We ended up giving all the equipment to a nurse practitioner who was starting her office, arranging for followup care for all of our patients, and accepting with gratitude the offer of a large local clinic to take the records.

So, good luck. From my experience, you may need it.

Dave

I remember your letter when it was originally posted.
How are things in Saipan? I would think you might feel somewhat island-bound after the boundless expanses of Alaska, but all that might be an illusion. My sister lives in Fairbanks, a place that seems very isolated in the winter.

We are closing our practice this year. I'm 79 in August, my wife and partner is 69. We no llonger have the energy to deal with all the insurance company and government overhead, and of course it is impossible to compete with the hospital clinics. Especially in an area like Astoria which is "served" by two major hospital chains from Portland that compete heavily for market share in the provinces as well as in the Big City.

No one, of course, wants to take over the practice, let alone buy it. We might have an interested party for the building -- there are a couple of independent practitioners still in practice, but their numbers are dwindling, and their ability to capitalize a practice is in serious decline, so I don't know how that is going to work out.

Hi, Tom. Well, island life takes some adjusting. At the start of COVID all flights on and off were cancelled for some time and we were totally isolated. It was an uncomfortable time. Work isn’t perfect, of course, but issues only rise to the level of annoying from time to time. I’m still happy to be away from the issues of the mainland.
I hope your retirement goes well. Take care.

Both of you (Tom and David) strike me as interesting, smart docs. I miss your regular contributions, David, and Tom, will miss yours as well when you retire.
I know something of Bennington, a little about Astoria, and only tourist info (and what David has posted) about Saipan and Alaska. All three strike me as wonderful places to live, each with its own natural beauty and other benefits.

Docs tend to be a conservative lot when it comes to life choices. Most stay in places they know. That often translates to urban or suburban living (so cities tend to have too many docs, and rural areas too few). The groups coming out of training in recent years are afraid of small, self-employed practices.

Sadly, all of this means that each of you may have fantastic practices in wonderful places, but will have a hard time recruiting.

Also keep in mind that this site has a regular readership of less than 50 docs (maybe well less than 50, despite Bert's best efforts) and so it is really no surprise that postings here don't produce many leads...

Best of luck to all three of you.

True about the limited audience. However, we are a SELECT audience... those who appreciate more rural areas and independence. Pitching a deal to a thousand doctors who want to live in Chicago seems pointless. Ah, well... it's the price we pay for a remarkable life.

I agree -- I wouldn't have it any other way.
I started in a really rural area south of Eugene, and moved to the big city of Astoria (pop 10,000) 13 years later. In l In the 80's it was very difficult to make a living in a rural practice; I don't suppose it is much easier now.
The realistic options in a place like Astoria is to sign up with a hospital clinic -- the hospitals seem to have limitless money and pay much better (at least twice) what I can make. But you have to put up with the hospital nonsense and endless, fruitless meetings.

A quick update: We have more or less recovering from the stress of COVID and kicked closing the office down the road. None-the-less, if anyone takes a fancy to being a small town independent doc in southern Vermont, please give me a ring. I will give you it all, free of charge, just to know my folks are taken care of.
Avery