TheETG Position Statement…..Changes In U.S. Health Care

Doctors of Traditional Medicine. In spite of having access to an endless supply of guaranteed customers, they contributed to the creation of the 3rd party payer system, the medical insurance industry….thus allowing doctors to price themselves out of their own market of guaranteed customers. The 3rd party payers then seized control over the family business and proceeded to run it into the ground.

Lesson learned = Bad business is bad for business. Bad businesses cannot remain in business for indefinite periods of time. Eventually the poop hits the fan and the wheels come off. People in the field of Traditional Medicine who would like to avoid going down with the ship should consider changing their business model.

— flat fees customers can pay……Set flat fees for your services that the customer can afford and pay —-out-of-pocket—- at the end of the visit. This may require you to learn a more research based approach to treating patients and a practice less dependent on what you were taught at medical school.. At some point people are gonna want health care, not health insurance.

— competent self-care…….By the increase in costs, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries are making sure that many of your customers will be seeking alternatives to going to see you for your tradition based rather than research based “treatments”. There are an ever growing number of people and businesses outside your profession aggressively providing educational services that create a in-expensive competent self-care option to people that might otherwise be –your– customers. It would be wise to be proactive and get in on those services and design a revenue generating way of doing so.

— incompetence avoidance……..Faulty assumptions are the mother of all screw ups. A major contributor to the practice of arrogance and incompetence rather than health care after you graduate from medical school, nursing school, or P.T. school, is the faulty assumption that you were taught a standard of care based on science and research rather than tradition and hand-me-down habits, and approaches to care. It would be wise to abandon that belief system. Many people are leaving you behind in the knowledge area. It would be wise to behave as though such is the case. No business can survive competitively without R & D

[research and development]

. Keeping up with research and contributing to your own development should be viewed as the end all and be all of your professional existence.