He's known to his staff and many patients at Dr. M but his colleagues, friends, and family call him Mac. He’s been married for 21 years to Cheryl, who was a unit secretary on the floor where Mac did a lot of his work as a resident. Their daughter, Michele is 19 and a sophomore chemistry major at Pitt. She does not want to be a physician.
Dr. M was raised in Allentown but went to Pitt, studied medicine at Pitt, and did his residencies at Pitt. His office is festooned with blue and gold. He had planned to open a practice in western PA, but his father died a few months before he was to finish his fellowship, and he felt he should locate closer to his mother.
Dr. M is only 49 but he’s pretty old school… tie, lab coat, Wednesday afternoon off, week-long CME conferences a couple of times a year, Sunday brunch at the country club. When he started this practice it was a piece of cake, even though things started to change pretty quickly. That was 1990 and life was pretty good for physicians. Full reimbursement, for the most part, open networks, no referrals needed, etc. HMOs changed everything, but Dr. M was reasonably immune because he had a needed specialty and there weren’t that many GIs in the Valley area.
In those days, he ruled the roost in his practice. He got some help from the Pennsylvania Medical Society on how to open a practice, hired an older cousin to run the practice, and hung out his shingle. He went to a few local medical society meetings to network but he hasn’t been involved since. (He still belongs but he’s not sure why. He belongs to the AMA basically to get JAMA.)
Five years ago, as he grew sick and tired of all the hassles and the growing competition from large, hospital-owned groups, Dr. M decided to sell his practice to Valley Medical Group (VMG), a physician-owned multi-specialty group.
Dr. M likes Pam Baumgartner, the office manage VMG brought in. She’s efficient, hardworking, keeps things running smoothly, and has taken many administrative burdens off of him. But he still thinks of this as his practice and occasionally questions VMG’s decisions. Pam and Dr. M try to work things out, but on a couple of occasions she’s gone to her higher ups at VMG and they’ve called Dr. M to “straighten him out” as he puts it.
While Dr. M likes Pam, he wasn’t so sure about Dr. Andy at first, and they butted heads frequently. They’ve slowly developed a rapport over the few years that Dr. Andy has worked there.
Even though he sold his practice, Dr. M has still become more and more dissatisfied with the medical practice climate in Pennsylvania. Now that Michele is in college, he and Cheryl have decided to pack up and move to Florida, where he plans to join a multi-specialty practice outside of Sarasota.
Other things to consider about Dr. M:
- He uses technology but it doesn’t come easy for him.
- Mac regrets missing many of Michele’s sporting events and dance recitals. He’s trying to make up for it now, but he knows Cheryl and Michele are much closer.
- Finances are not a big issue for Mac. VMG paid him a nice price for his practice and he has sizable savings and investments.