Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 2/8/21

It’s been a pretty crazy week in the clinical trenches, with COVID cases ticking up in my area. I’m approaching my one-year COVIDversary, memorializing one year since the day I saw my first COVID case, which happened to be one of the first five in my city.

I laugh a little thinking about it, since of course it presented itself at the urgent care as so many other health conditions do. It wasn’t some diagnostic mystery at a tertiary medical center, or an academic puzzle for someone like House. It was a household contact of someone suspected to be infected, who presented to our office saying she had a fever and couldn’t smell dirty diapers. My physician assistant and I spent the next several weeks wondering if we were going to die. Little did we know that the day would come when we would be seeing 15 to 20 known positive patients a day, with essentially the same level of employer-provided personal protective equipment we had prior to the pandemic (although many of us are supplying our own N95s).

Urgent care centers are healthcare’s front door for many patients who might not have a primary physician or who can’t see theirs during hours that are convenient. Even before COVID, our practice was seeing significant growth, having expanded from five locations to more than 20 in the five years I had worked there.

In November, I was having heated phone calls with our governor’s office about their vaccine plan that left non-hospital-owned urgent cares out in the cold. They were incredulous that urgent care offices treat COVID patients. “When did that start?” they asked. That would be March 14, when COVID-19 first crossed our state lines. The staffer seriously thought that all COVID patients were being seen in the emergency department, which doesn’t give me great confidence in our state understanding how healthcare is delivered to its residents. They also didn’t fully grasp that my practice performs almost 10% of the state’s COVID testing and diagnoses sometimes 500 new COVID cases a day. Seeing more than half a million patients a year, damn straight we’re on the front lines, so how about sending us some vaccine?

As I reflect back on the last year, it’s been a wild ride. At the beginning of COVID, we had to temporarily close several of our locations due to low volumes. I was furloughed without pay, something I never expected to happen as a physician. Once we started offering testing, though, it was off to the races, with volumes going crazy. I’ve mentioned before that in my clinical world I’m just a worker bee, an hourly physician with no leadership responsibility. However, due to my experience and as a consultant, I’m constantly analyzing the actions of my employers against what I might do or recommend that my clients do in a similar situation.

Some of the things they’ve done have been good. Retention bonuses for our clinical support staff helped boost morale and prevent turnover, particularly when patient volumes were high. However, they never did anything to bolster physician morale. When we brought it up, we were told that we should be glad to have jobs since one of the local health systems had completed a significant physician layoff. That never makes one feel good.

Neither does learning that your employer accepted millions of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program funds despite a clinical rebound that had us seeing more patients than we have ever seen in organization’s existence. It’s particularly special when you read about the PPP amount on the front page of the local paper right after seeing an email from your boss that everyone needs to tighten their belts because of the finances. They weren’t following any communications playbook that I would recommend as a consultant, that’s for sure.

The “acting poor” strategy also didn’t play very well when they announced that we were opening additional locations even though we couldn’t fully staff the existing ones. As a part-timer with other sources of income, I had the luxury of being able to push any negative reaction to the back of my mind, but I watched some of my full-time colleagues begin to look for employment elsewhere. Burnout is real and 12-hour shifts are rough, especially when they routinely stretch to 13 or 14 because you’re never allowed to say no to patients who are streaming in the door. I watched several of my favorite physician assistants leave for jobs with eight-hour shifts at local hospitals and have to say I was a bit envious.

I suspected something major might be up several months ago when they hired a new member of the C-suite, but didn’t announce his presence to the physicians. I met him walking through my patient care area after he had been on the job for a couple of weeks. I was underwhelmed by his demeanor and the fact that he was oblivious to my full patient board and the 40+ patients on the parking lot wait list and wanted to stand there and chat. I was even more underwhelmed a week later when his announcement email finally arrived, not from the CEO or COO, but from himself. At that point, I decided to start looking for other clinical opportunities, even though I knew that part-time physician spots basically don’t exist in my community and I’m only in this one because I’ve been here so long.

Toward the end of an already busy clinical week, we received an invitation to an all-hands meeting a couple of hours from when the email was sent. That’s never a good sign. Most of our staff meetings are at 6 a.m. so people can get to their shifts on time. During this quickie Zoom call, we learned that our previously physician-owned practice had gone the way of so many before us in being acquired.

I can’t say I’m surprised knowing the personalities involved, but it explains so much about how they’ve been managing the finances and some of the other decisions that have been made over the last several months. I’m sure it was all targeted towards making the balance sheet look as healthy as possible.

I’ve seen many versions of this movie before and I’ve never seen an ending that works out well for all parties. Inevitably, the investors want their money back and then some, and that money has to come from somewhere. I’m at a point in my career where the plot has to be pretty compelling for me to stay until the end and I’m not sure this fits the bill. I’ve done some research on the investors and I’m not impressed by their healthcare experience. Having participated in due diligence exercises with other organizations looking for outside funding, what I could find on them left me with quite a few questions and not as many answers as I would like.

Most people don’t realize that when physicians leave a clinical position, it’s not like quitting other jobs. It’s not unusual for physicians to be required to give a 90- or 120-day notice so that patients aren’t left in the lurch. Sometimes non-continuity practices like mine will accept less notice, but that’s not the case with my employer, who actually lengthened the notice period for some recent hires. There are some other things that were announced in addition to the investors, and frankly I’m not sure I want to be around when those proverbial bombs begin to drop.

I’ve been thinking about leaving for a while, and this might just be the push I need. When the handwriting on the wall wasn’t done with Sharpie but rather with red spray paint, it’s likely time to dust off the resignation letter. It’s an unsettling feeling since I’ve only resigned from two long-term jobs in my career, but I trust my gut, even in the middle of a global pandemic and without another clinical gig on the horizon. Time for my next leap into the unknown.

What’s your best job quitting story? Leave a comment or email me.

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