Key Points
- There are attractive places to practice within almost every region of the country.
- The quality of practices often improves dramatically if doctors are willing to locate outside a major metro area.
- The best tool for doctors searching for the right opportunity is an open mind.
For doctors starting out or relocating, the question of where to practice is often answered in different ways.
Some who want to land the best financial opportunity may be drawn to an attractive offer in an underserved market or a less-than
desirable location. Others who want to be close to family—or big mountain skiing or the beach or first-rate theater—may be
willing to accept less pay and a higher overall cost of living in order to wake up in the morning and be where they want to
be. "It's possible to be a happy physician anywhere in the world," says Jeffrey J. Denning, a practice management consultant
in La Jolla, CA.
Still, as Denning and other experts know all too well, there are qualities that distinguish one practice location from another. Besides a satisfying overall quality of life for both physicians
and their families, these include:
- A doctor-friendly malpractice environment, including comparatively low insurance premiums.
- Solid reimbursements, so that doctors who work a reasonable number of hours can still expect a good return on their investment.
- A good doctor-to-population ratio, which makes it more likely there'll be a range of viable practice opportunities available.
- Proximity to a hospital providing excellent state-of-the-art care in a range of areas.
- A lower-than-average cost of doing business, coupled with an overall lower cost of living.
- Relatively low managed care penetration or, at the least, less market concentration, so that one or two health plans don't
call all the shots.
Besides these essential things, some locations stand apart, say experts, because they offer another quality: a version of
the Norman Rockwell idea of medical practice. "In lots of smaller cities and towns, the relationship between the doctor and
the patient is still very much a traditional one," says David Cornett, a regional vice president of Cejka Search, a national
healthcare recruitment firm. "Not only are doctors a central and respected part of these communities, they often end up treating
multiple generations of the same family." Besides the "intangible satisfactions" that this continuity of care affords, Cornett
adds, it also "lowers the risk that a patient will file a malpractice suit if something doesn't go the way it was expected
to." Tossing this and the other must-have qualities into the mix, we asked a group of experts to assist us in identifying some
of the best places in the nation to practice. None of these cities or small towns, we hasten to add, is perfect, in part because
of the domination in many areas of the country of one or two major health plans. But for physicians starting out or looking
for greener pastures, our cities and towns offer much that's essential to a happy life and practice.
The good news is that there are attractive places to practice within almost every region of the country. Many are within a
one-to two-hour commute from a larger metropolitan area—which, whatever other attractions they offer physicians eager to start
a practice or look for a new job, are often fiercely competitive markets. By expanding their horizons, doctors can usually
do better, says Mark Smith, executive vice president of recruiting at Merritt, Hawkins & Associates, the national recruitment
firm.
"If a physician really wants to be in Dallas, we can still find some quality practices for him," says Smith. "But if we can
get him to expand his search to places within a 45-to 90-minute commute of Dallas—Denton or Gainesville or Dennison, for example—then
the quality of the type of practices he'll find goes through the ceiling."
The Mid-South/South Atlantic
We begin our tour of the best places to practice in a region where practice revenue is among the highest in the nation, according
to the latest Medical Economics Continuing Survey. Some of the places to consider in this part of the country are:
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Posted May 26 2007 08:05PM
