It is clear there are pros and cons to practice ownership, with some industry leaders saying it is the key to success while others say consolidation is inevitable.
Andrew Gerstner, MD, an independent anesthesiologist and consultant, connected with Becker's to share how his decision to move to private practice has changed his career.
Note: This response has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Dr. Andrew Gerstner: I finally removed myself from private equity and corporatized medicine and changed jobs. I stopped working at giant hospital systems and moved to a smaller, physician-owned hospital and have a much more manageable schedule and am simply just paid fairly for my time … and no longer have to put up with being forced to take on more uncompensated or under-compensated work just because the hospital or staffing company has understaffed everything and expect physicians to pick up the slack for their own business mistakes for free.
I will carry that through with me for the rest of my career. I will only work at a place like this or do locums work. I will not show any more loyalty to corporatized medicine because their business model relies on taking advantage of physicians and trying to hold them back from their fair market value as highly skilled professionals that went into a ton of debt just to serve society. Medicine in the country will continue to decline all the way down to "pathetic" if physicians do not know their worth because they will just burnout and quit, and it will be all cheap-labor, under-trained people taking care of patients to check a box and send the bill.