Independent Physician Spotlight: Steven Murphy
New feature! We put out a call to celebrate independent physicians, and we’re featuring a different doctor who’s decided to go (or remain!) independent to restore their autonomy and provide better patient care. This week, meet Steven Murphy, Medical Director of Concierge Medical Associates. You can connect further with Steven on LinkedIn.
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On/Offcall is the weekly dose of information and inspiration that every physician needs.
1. Steven, give us a little background on you and your practice. I'm a Board Certified Internist with training in Genetics from Mt. Sinai and Yale. There are under 200 internists with genetic training in the country and less than 100 doing clinical practice.
2. What were the biggest challenges for you as you decided to go independent? The biggest challenges to independence are human resources risks, dependence on insurance reimbursement and revenue cycles, and certificate of need laws preventing fair competition. For starting a practice independently? There are a bunch more. First issue is having the desire for an office. We address those challenges by not taking insurance. Our second solution to HR is rock solid training that includes hiring slow and firing quickly.
3. What have the biggest benefits been for both you and your patients? Independence allows you to make the right choices for the patient first. Not for a boss first. Whoever that boss is, they have their interests at heart. Physicians used to be trained to be independent, now it is a team-based approach which makes it harder to say "the buck stops with me." Patient ownership is something to be valued, not a punchline in a joke.
4. What's your advice to anyone who's thinking about making the leap or deciding what path to take straight out of training? If you are a primary care provider (Internist/Family Med) don't start with an office, start by accepting Medicare and seeing patients in nursing homes. Then once you have enough revenue, start with a single exam room. Grow from there. If you don't want to accept Medicare you will need to save 3 months worth of operating costs as a cushion to start at minimum if you are doing in-person care.
5. Are there any resources you can recommend to help physicians who are considering this pathway? Absolutely, there are legion of resources. If you accept insurance, you must understand billing and revenue cycle before you see a single patient. AMA has a great resource and with AI, it is even easier to set great processes upfront. If you are not going to take insurance, the best resources come from Atlas MD.
6. How can other physicians who are inspired support you? The best thing physicians can do is to support my Substack where I educate about Longevity Medicine and Geroscience: The Longevity Insider with Dr. Murphy
Connect with Steven on LinkedIn and learn more about his practice here.
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On/Offcall is the weekly dose of information and inspiration that every physician needs.
Dr. Murphy is a board certified physician and a healthcare executive with over 10 years of experience in internal medicine, obesity medicine, regenerative medicine and medical genetics. He is the Chief Medical Officer at Total DX Connect, a software services portal that connects patients to physicians and multiple clinical labs that provide innovative testing services in the growing fields of esoteric diagnostic and specialty laboratory testing. He is also an Assistant Professor at New York Medical College, where he teaches. In addition he conducts research in stem cell biologics, genomics and personalized medicine.