Written by Brent Lacey on February 22, 2021. Posted in Early Career and Young Professionals, Podcast, Podcast Episodes, Practice Management, Women in Medicine.

Podcast Episode 47 – Here’s What You Need to Succeed in Your Private Practice Business – Dr. Sandy Weitz

Episode 47 – Today’s guest is Dr. Sandy Weitz. Dr. Weitz is a pain management specialist who started her own private practice and grew it to 11 providers. She built a 25,000 square foot medical office building to house her clinic and multi-specialty ambulatory surgery center. Dr. Weitz also owned an anesthesia company, imaging center as well as several other vertically integrated medical businesses. She ultimately sold several of her businesses to various partners and retired at 53.

That all sounds amazing, and it is, but it wasn’t without its challenges, as you’ll hear her discuss. Since retiring, Dr. Weitz is teaching other physicians the business of medicine. She is showing them how to maximize their earnings potential by leveraging their core medical practice to segue into other business initiatives. This is going be an episode worth bookmarking to return to over and over. I’m telling you, you won’t want to miss out on this discussion.

Free Resource: The 10 Day Simple Clinic Makeover

Check out the additional free resources available at The Scope of Practice!

Meet Dr. Sandy Weitz

Dr. Sandy Weitz is a fellowship-trained, board certified pain management specialist who started her own practice and grew it to 11 providers. She built a 25,000 square foot medical office building to house her clinic and multi-specialty ambulatory surgery center. Dr. Weitz also owned an anesthesia company, imaging center as well as several other vertically integrated medical businesses. She ultimately sold several of her businesses to various partners and retired at 53. Now Dr. Weitz is teaching other physicians the business of medicine. She is showing them how to maximize their earnings potential by leveraging their core medical practice to segue into other business initiatives.

Download Dr. Weitz’s guide to strategies for leveraging your medical practice: Click to download

Download the cheat sheet on how to start your own practice: Click to download

Join the Business and Personal Finance for Physicians and Dentists Facebook Group!

Most physicians and dentists come out of training programs with a huge amount of personal debt and little to no idea of how to actually run a clinical practice. This Facebook community is for anyone who wants to learn more about how to manage their business more successfully and master their personal finances.

Check out the Doctor Podcast Network!

The Doctor Podcast Network is a group of physician and physician family podcasters with incredible messages to share with physicians. I’m incredibly excited to be a founding member of the organization. We are a large and growing network with incredible outreach.

We podcast about any and all topics that are important to physicians and their families including:

Financial wellness
Business mastery and leadership
Marriage and family support
Real estate
and much more!

Click here and come check out the great podcasts that are a part of the network. If you’re thinking about starting a podcast, we’d love to have you join us! Help us reach out to physicians all over the world!

One-on-one personal finance and business coaching

If you need a little more individualized help figuring out:

How to build and implement a successful long-term finance strategy
How to budget effectively without going crazy
What to do in order to get you and your spouse on the same page with your finances
Writing a resume
How to find the right practice to join
Or anything else related to business or personal finance

I’d love to help you so you can have the successful career and financial freedom you deserve. Just click here and email me to set up a free consultation to determine if one-on-one coaching is right for you.

I’ve coached hundreds of families to eliminate millions of dollars in debt and get their finances on track, and I’d love to help you do the same so you feel safe knowing your career and personal finances are as strong as you want them to be.

Click here and email me to set up a free consultation today!

Other options

If you want to learn more about starting a career in healthcare, you can check healthcare courses as an introduction to the field.

Show times

00:00 – Introduction to the episode
00:15 – Subscribe to the podcast, and please leave a review!
01:35 – Email me if you’re interested in getting one-on-one finance or career coaching.
03:38 – Introduction to Dr. Sandy Weitz.
04:43 – Introduction to Dr. Sandy Weitz and the private practice model.
05:56 – Dr. Sandy Weitz shares her personal journey from medical school to growing her private practice.
07:23 – After a year of growing her private practice, she realized that her contract with her hospital wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
08:06 – She stepped out on her own and bought/built a building to create her own private practice.
09:39 – Why did Dr. Sandy Weitz want to start her own private practice business?
11:42 – Sometimes, entrepreneurship requires uprooting and completely changing venues. Dr. Sandy Weitz moved from San Francisco to Baton Rouge to start her private practice.
13:14 – Dr. Weitz understood that she had worth and value, so she was able to stand up for herself by knowing what she was worth.
14:51 – Starting a private practice business doesn’t necessarily require business experience, but fortunately Dr. Weitz did have some.
15:51 – Having advisors, professional consultants, and mentors is crucial to success. But, you have to have your own opinions!
18:56 – Dr. Weitz talks about how she started to expand her private practice team. She thinks her biller was the most important person that got her started.
21:09 – When you have your own private practice business, make sure that you know enough to be able to actively manage the various parts of your business, especially the billing.
22:16 – Spend the time during fellowship and residency to learn about billing and coding. That’ll be invaluable to your private practice pursuits. Make sure that you’re getting paid for the work that you actually do.
24:41 – When did Dr. Sandy Weitz start hiring a new doctor for her private practice? It was a lot faster than you would have thought.
26:11 – You need to start looking for a job 2 years before you’re ready to start the job. You need to get a state medical license, hospital privileges and then get accepted onto insurance plans.
28:05 – What are the criteria you should look for when hiring your new physicians? The biggest criterion is personality fit.
30:11 – How do you as the physician leader shape the team culture?
32:29 – Dr. Sandy Weitz discusses contacts for new physicians (partners or employees.
36:44 – You need to appreciate both sides of the employee/employer relationship. Contracts should benefit all partners.
39:44 – Ancillary services offer a big potential boost to your revenue but it adds a lot of work.
42:02 – You don’t have to be in a surgical subspecialty to have ancillary services to offer.
45:32 – Offering lab and pharmacy services can be lucrative, but there are some challenges to overcome.
46:14 – Consider what your exit strategy will be when you’re building your private practice. Start planning your exit EARLY, says Dr. Sandy Weitz.
49:02 – Connect to Dr. Sandy Weitz.
50:38 – Summary of the episode.
51:11 – This week’s free resource is a guide called “The 10 Day Simple Clinic Makeover.”
52:26 – Signing off!

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