Are you a physician curious about career opportunities beyond traditional clinical practice? In this episode of BootstrapMD, Dr. Mike Woo-Ming and his guest, Dr. John Jurica, dive deep into the growing world of non-clinical and non-traditional careers for doctors.
With 38 years of experience as a family physician and hospital Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Jurica shares his expertise and insights on alternative career paths that can offer greater flexibility, autonomy, and fulfillment. He also reveals exciting details about his upcoming free virtual Nonclinical Summit, where attendees can learn from a wide array of experts discussing various unique opportunities.
Whether you’re considering a career transition or simply exploring your options, this episode is packed with valuable information and inspiration. Tune in to discover the possibilities that await you in the ever-evolving landscape of non-clinical careers for physicians.
The 2024 Nonclinical Career Summit
https://bootstrapmd.com/go/non-clinical-summit/
Transcript:
Dr. Mike: [00:00:00] Hey guys, it’s Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD, the podcast for physician and healthcare entrepreneurs. Today I’m interviewing one of my favorite guests. He’s a friend of the program. He’s been there almost since the beginning. We’re now at, I think, John, I’m like 250 plus. I know it doesn’t escalate the number of episodes that you’ve done, but you’ve been there from almost the beginning.
And I don’t think you need much introduction, but I think, we’ve got, we get new listeners all the time. If you don’t know John he’s synonymous for being an expert [00:01:00] in non clinical careers, non traditional careers for physicians. If you’re a doctor right now and you think the only way I can make money is seeing patients, then I think you’re getting a lot out of today’s interview.
He also has an upcoming summit at the time of this recording that will be coming up in the next weeks, maybe months coming up, but you’ll definitely want to register. It’s the non clinical summit. Where he’ll be introducing guests himself, other experts to talk about different paths that a physician don’t traditionally take.
So I’d like to introduce the program, my good friend, John Jurica. John, how are you doing?
John Jurica: I am doing very well. I’m very happy to be back here. It’s good to see you again, Mike.
Dr. Mike: Good to see you. So like I said, I think a lot of people know your name. You’ve been around. In a good way, been around a week. We both have been around in talking about just non traditional careers, non traditional paths for doctors.
But I like to get to know [00:02:00] the man behind the legend of John Jurico, because I remember it was there at the beginning when you were posting on Facebook and just, maybe finding your own path. And now I since found it and since found it and now is coaching and consulting with other doctors to help them.
With their past. So let’s talk about yourself your background, what do you specialize in and maybe where you are in your career for right now.
John Jurica: All right. I’m trained as a family physician. I practice for well, I’m still licensed. I’m still practicing now. So let’s see. It’ll be well, 38 years.
Let’s and I was a CMO for hospital for 14 years. And during that time for four years, I stopped practicing completely. And then I went back into it when I opened up some urgent care centers with some colleagues and and a partner who’s actually the CEO. And I am the medical director and part owner.
And when I did that, I got interested in looking at these non clinical careers, cause I had a little more time on my hands once I left the hospital setting. It was a little [00:03:00] slow at the beginning. We started from scratch. So I would be at the clinic and I would have time to do other things. And I got interested in this.
And so I started investigating it and I started my podcast physician, non clinical careers to learn about these non traditional and non clinical careers. Then I started doing some courses. I started an Academy called nonclinical career Academy, which is at nonclinicalcareeracademy. com. You can check that out if you’re interested.
It’s just some lectures. And actually I’m doing a weekly Q and a, now I have about 27 of those posted inside that Academy. And then last year I had a partner and I, Tom Davis, some of you may know him. He and I started something called new script, which we have since closed. But one of the things we did before we closed it is that we started we did a summit last year.
It was 12 hours of lectures over three nights. It was live. It was on zoom. We had live Q and a, and we had people come and talk about non clinical careers, non [00:04:00] traditional careers, things like the locums and telemedicine and all the other jobs and things like that. And so even though we stopped new script, we’re still continuing with the summit.
So that’s my latest big project coming up that you mentioned earlier, and that’ll be coming in April. This is what I’m doing now.
Dr. Mike: I love it too. And like I said, some people ask, why do you do podcasts? And. For one of the reasons that we do it is because we’re actually looking to learn ourselves.
I know you started your podcast, because there wasn’t a lot of information in these areas. I think I may have come across like some manual from the AMA called like leaving the bedside or something like that. And with that, it was giving you like a slight eye sure you want to do this, but there wasn’t a lot of information.
What have you learned from, having your podcast in terms of the different careers that are out there? Because I think you, I think we both realized that there’s a lot more out there than we may have initially thought. [00:05:00]
John Jurica: Yeah. When I started this I, I didn’t really know what was out there other than what I had already done.
I was a physician advisor at the hospital for US, so I knew that I was a medical director for a while. Then I was a CMO, but outside of that, I didn’t know. And turns out there’s at least. eight or nine major industries that hire physicians and you’ve got all the stuff they can do on their own. And so I’ve been exposed to this and it’s, the thing I’ve noticed too, is at the beginning, it was like, everybody wanted to do something really simple, quit their job as a physician for whatever reason, and do something where they could work for someone else, like doing U. M. or being a physician advisor or medical director. On the podcast, I keep learning about new things and things that didn’t even exist before. Five or 10 years ago. And so my opinion has changed about what physicians can and should do. Not that there’s one thing, but I think we don’t give ourselves enough credit.
And if we can find a better way to pull in our medical knowledge and help clients or [00:06:00] patients and still maintain control, which is one of the things we really hate about being in practice sometime is losing the control to a corporate employer. It’s just. It’s been eye opening for the last few years.
I started the podcast, I think 6 years ago now. So it’s been fun.
Dr. Mike: Now. I know you’ve mentored, wide variety of physicians, different types of specialties. Do you see, is there a common thread that you see, or is there a recommended type of physician that should be attracted to?
These type of careers I might say if you’re a physician just out of residency, you shouldn’t even be looking at these things because you don’t know what is actually out there. Or is it, is it somewhere for just someone who’s in mid career? Are you seeing anything or what do you recommend for the doctors out there?
They’re listening to this interview.
John Jurica: In terms of the timing of it. Yeah. It used to be, we were mostly looking at physicians who had been in practice 20, 30 years, they were getting burned out in nearing retirement. So they need some [00:07:00] kind of transition or do something that isn’t so intense. It’s difficult after 30 years of doing surgery or intense medical care, you just get worn out, but really it’s this the demand for it is at all ages.
In fact, I had a question like I think less than a week ago, someone saying I’m a resident and I’m not going to do clinical care. I’ve decided, I forget he was an internist and he said I’m not going to do it. What are my options? So it can hit at any point as you’ve probably noticed too, if you talk to med students And residents, they’re already burnt out and they think the next step is going to take them and they’ll be less burned out.
But then they find out when they get into practice, they’re actually as burned out or worse than they were in residency and in med school. So unfortunately, this is the way, life is here in the United States.
Dr. Mike: Yeah, that’s very interesting. And again, I think Did a lot of these opportunities occur?
You said the last part didn’t use a lot of curve because of the pandemic. I know that for many doctors You They looked at the career a lot differently.
John Jurica: Oh, absolutely. The [00:08:00] pandemic did a lot of things to accelerate all of the remote jobs. There were jobs that had been remote, even forays into telemedicine, and just some of the work that was being done on site, but with the pandemic, they had to do it remotely.
So now like you can be an expert witness. That’s a common, job that do people do part time. It’s almost all remote now, even can testify in court remotely. You can do depositions remotely. So that part has changed a lot and it’s affected a lot of different non traditional jobs.
Dr. Mike: Now as a doctor, I wasn’t used to asking for help, especially when it came to subjects outside of medicine.
But then I found physiciancoaches. com. In an instant, I found hundreds of experts to help me in all aspects of life. On areas I was afraid to ask. Dealing with burnout, starting a side gig, money management, even help with my marriage. And the [00:09:00] best part? Nearly all experts are physicians themselves. After reading their profile in a quick chat, I knew I found the right mentor for me @physiciancoaches.com, help from professional colleagues is just a click away.
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as we were talking about this interview You wanted to talk about what you consider your favorite non traditional careers for physicians So i’m eager to hear this. So so what are your three favorite? Type of jobs that are not,
John Jurica: I [00:10:00] want to talk about this because it really has changed for me in the last, 5 or 6 years as I’ve been talking to more and more people. So I’m not going to go into all the, what I’ve talked about and heard about, but I’ve found people and the reason is some of my guests have really mastered these jobs and it seems to me a little more.
easy to discuss and train someone to do it than it used to be. And so this is why I think these three in particular stand out for me. So I’m going to go, I’m going to do the reverse order three, two, one with my number one top job. The first one is medical writer. Now people think of medical writing as, Oh, I can do that part time while I’m still clinical and it’s time consuming.
And can I really make money at it? But it’s a great job and It’s really been honed over the last 10 years to make it, the pay is good. If once you get enough clients or publishers that hire you and what have you usually as a freelancer though, rather than as an employee, the hours are flexible, location is [00:11:00] flexible.
There’s multiple genres you can do. You can eventually become an editor. There’s management positions. You can start before leaving your clinical job. So that’s always nice. We do have an advantage when we’re medical writers that a lot of us don’t understand. A lot of medical writers are not physicians.
And for us to write an article on a particular medical topic, let’s say, whether it’s a CME or for patients, we can do that a lot quicker than some, master’s level writer. Or a nurse who’s a writer, somebody like that. So really we can be much more efficient. And that means we get paid more in a per hour basis because we can generate more output.
You can do it as an independent contractor or as an employee. And there’s just lots of good examples of people are doing that. They’re working while they’re traveling with their family. They have a great lifestyle and they’re definitely making a good salary. So that’s my number three.
I would even consider that myself if I was [00:12:00] starting over somewhere in my mid career.
Dr. Mike: Just to go a little bit deeper, what types of companies are hiring medical writers.
John Jurica: Medical writers can find jobs or freelance opportunities and a lot of companies that some of which they don’t realize there are CME companies, of course, that hire them.
Most of those are freelance. You can work for a publishing company that’s publishing to the public and they will also take submissions. You can work for companies that publish for physicians, whether it’s CME or non CME, journalistic writing now in the pharma field, you can do technical writing, but there’s some, that’s not quite a hundred percent technical.
And most of the companies that hire writers for pharmacies are pharmaceutical companies, rather aren’t the pharmaceutical CRO. And that’s a, that’s a way to get in a little bit easier. Again, freelancer, you build these relationships and I’m trying to think of the other big companies, any kind of an educational company that deals with healthcare related topics or public health [00:13:00] will hire physician writers.
Dr. Mike: Great. Let’s hear your second choice.
John Jurica: Okay. Now, second one is a lot of your audience maybe still has not heard of this. We’ve all heard of expert witness consulting. It’s been around forever, but there’s something called medical legal consulting or medical legal pre litigation consulting. And this is something really that hasn’t been a separate thing until the last about 10 or 12 years.
There’s actually a physician named Armin Feldman, maybe you know him, but he’s the one that started this. In earnest, and actually has shared what he does with other physicians like myself. I’ve actually gone through his course. When you do medical legal consulting, you’re actually not ever going to do a deposition.
You’re never going to go to court. What you’re doing is you’re reviewing all of the records from an injured patient, it could be auto accident, could be workers comp, could be any kind of personal injury. And you’re serving as simply [00:14:00] a consultant to wade through that, organize it, explain to your attorney, client, what the records are.
Is going on and whether the the other side of the litigation has, accept the responsibility for all the injuries that you discover and all the consequences of those injuries. And actually any physician who’s been in practice can do this. So you don’t, you’re not an expert.
You’re basically, you’re a generalist looking at a chart on any type of patient. Just have to be meticulous. And the other time it pays much higher on an Medical care. You can start this while you’re still working clinically also. And it’s just a lot more flexible and you can do it remotely. And the hours are flexible as well.
So this o ne has really been something new. It’s so interesting because Dr. Feldman has actually started his own podcast in which he describes these cases. And so if you’re interested, you can just listen to the podcast. I [00:15:00] think it’s physicians, helping attorneys, helping patients or something, and you can get a feel for it and do this.
Either at the end of your career or as an adjunct to your career. And that’s one of the things you really can’t do as an expert witness. Most expert witnesses have to remain in practice. You could do this even after retirement once you learn how to do it. So that one has really intrigued me and that’s why I put it on my list today.
Dr. Mike: Yeah. And just to clarify that too, it is physicians helping attorneys.
John Jurica: The podcast, you look that up and you’ll find that and they have, I don’t know, about 30 episodes or so. And it’s really quite interesting. And I think some of your listeners might find it intriguing.
Dr. Mike: All right. So we talked about medical writing.
We’ve talked about this medical legal type of consultant. What is your number one non traditional career?
John Jurica: Okay. So my number one, I’ve come to this, to the conclusion that the best opportunity for those physicians who, are really looking for something to do. And it’s similar [00:16:00] to what you teach.
Basically, this is a broad And what it is a clinical or what I might call a clinical light business, clinically related business. It could be DPC or something like that, but it’s other things like aesthetics and med spas and infusion centers, or even something like my wife is doing, which I can use as an example in a minute.
But the thing that I like is to be able to create your own business. You can be the CEO of your life and your business as you write about in your book. You’re not really accountable to other people. You can scale it. You can hire a bunch of people to extend your reach. And even sometimes it can be something that you passively supervise.
And not only can you earn more if, if it’s successful and, Most of these really are if they’re planned properly, but the thing that we forget is that generally they become an asset that is, you can [00:17:00] sell at the end and that’s the thing that really, when I have interviewed the med spa owners and particularly one that I’ll mention that sold her med spa and even in talking with my wife now, because we’re getting ready to sell her business.
So let me tell you about her business a little bit. So she. Decided about 15 years ago that she wanted to do something after she stopped working as a respiratory therapist. And so she looked around and she was interested in doing something that would be very helpful to people like clinical medicine, a service.
And so she opened a franchise for a senior care business. We’ll call it that it’s in home personal care. It’s not home health. And so she started doing that. And. Built that up over time and ultimately now it’s been 15 years and she’s generating like 200 to 300 K a year in whatever you want to call it a combination of salary [00:18:00] and I guess distributions.
She loves taking care of seniors. She has a great reputation in the community. And basically since it’s time to sell, then we’ll get, basically almost like selling a house that has no mortgage, you’re going to get a big asset, which can just go into your retirement, part of your retirement plan.
I like that idea. And I think there’s a lot of things like you’ve talked about and as I’ve mentioned here earlier that it’s just, it’s a great. Thing is it really leverages all of a physician’s skills. Most of us have to learn a little bit more about business, but I think at the end of the day, it’s going to be the most fulfilling thing and financially might be the best option.
You can work for a hospital as a CMO for, 300, 400, 000 a year and try to put all that money away. But when you. All you have is what you put into it in terms of retirement accounts. It’s not like you really have an asset. So that’s why I’m really getting interested in that. I’ve mentioned a couple of other examples, if that’s [00:19:00] okay.
I know Jason Ryan, he was on my podcast long time ago, a few years ago, and he started boards and beyond, which was designed to it was just an educational platform to teach his medical students where he was working. He did that for about 10 years and he sold that to McGraw Hill in 2022.
Now, I don’t know what they paid for that, but I’m sure he got a big cash out of that. Same thing. Greg Hanson, he was running something called flip MD where he was helping clinicians to find consulting gigs. It was like a tech thing really. Cause it’s like an app and he sold that two years after starting it to good Rx, and again, it probably had a great cash out.
Not anyone’s going to have that kind of turnaround. My wife’s franchise took years to build, but I think physicians could do it. And they’re going to get, they’re just going to be, it’s like running your own practice, but without insurance and a corporate, like going to the hospital, have to deal with the corporate mentality over there.
Dr. Mike: Yeah. I love it. Interesting enough, Craig and I actually went to the same high school together.
John Jurica: [00:20:00] Really?
Dr. Mike: Yeah. And but I’m much older. He has many classes over. What I think one of the key things is in trying to classify these types of health related businesses. Is the physician is not the integral component of providing that service if you notice this. That whether it’s you know, as i’m the owner of a med spa or the With your wife, she’s the owner.
She’s not performing as like a respiratory therapist performing these type of services it’s because if you are the physician and you’re the integral part of the business You’re not you’re never going to be able to sell that business. We see this with solo practitioners who work, 30, 40 years.
Nobody’s going to buy it because nobody’s going to pay for that physician. Selling for the most part is nobody’s going to usually have to do it. It’s where they, the business is providing some type of product or some type of service, and that’s, what’s attractive to, the McGraw Hills to these other different companies, good or Xs, because that’s an asset that [00:21:00] they can use that some value, and it’s not
essential for the position to be seeing patients, which, which is, it seems, intuitive, but, we see again, all these fellow practitioners who I worked there for me all these years, and I, unfortunately, Nobody really wants to purchase that practice for the most part.
John Jurica: Yeah, I know when I was a CMO I was helping my hospital purchase practices and they had a little bit of wiggle room where they could entice the physician But the physicians were always completely frustrated by the fact that they could maybe get a hundred thousand for their practice that’s right that was it.
They thought they had this million dollar asset, but it’s no, the hospital’s got to hire physicians to do your job, or they have to keep you on as an employee, which is where all the income goes to. In fact, hospitals lose a hundred thousand per, per employed physician on average. So there’s nothing there unless you build something that has These other services, or, I see some good ortho groups and GI groups where they’ll have a lab and they’ll have a surgery center and things like that, [00:22:00] which, they can get some at, value from that.
Dr. Mike: Yeah. Some assets, equipment. Sure. Yeah. But for the most part yeah, it’s, if you can take yourself out of the business. In some capacity where you’re not the rate limiting step as we learned, like in chemistry, you’re going to be a lot ahead of most other doctors who are in business.
John Jurica: Absolutely. So that’s my new favorite. I think it’s where I’m going to retire on that note.
Dr. Mike: Okay.
I’ve been speaking to this for years. So again,
John Jurica: Exactly. I know I’m coming back to me after all these years. He tried to beat this into me. And it’s true.
Dr. Mike: So we’ve got the summit coming up. Let’s talk about it.
What’s it all about? Who should attend? What will they learn? Tell us everything about
this.
John Jurica: Okay, so here’s the scoop on the summit. We’re calling it clinical practice. Make it great or move on. Because what we’re doing this year is we’re actually bringing people in that are talking about the practice and small business involving health care like we’ve just talked [00:23:00] about.
And then we’re, we’ve got an attorney there who’s going to talk about how to protect yourself when you’re doing 1 of these ventures. We are going to also highlight some non traditional careers. There’s a lecture on do you really need to leave medicine or is it just a crappy boss or job, that’s the first decision you have to make if you like practicing medicine and then these business startup ideas, we’ve got we’re having a lecture on building a profitable small business.
We got the cash based medical clinic that you’re going to talk about. We’re going to be talking about med spas and also got a couple that are coming on that co own and run an infusion lounge. It’s a doctor and a nurse. So that should be interesting. And then we’ll go back into some of the nonclinical stuff.
The medical legal, I’m going to have someone Okay. Talking about that expert witness consulting medical affairs, regulatory consulting, which is something that can be done for medical device companies. And then another 1 is intrigued me lately is doing remote social security disability reviews, not doing an IME, but taking [00:24:00] the paperwork that’s been produced already and doing another level review of just the paperwork, which can generate, a good two or 300 an hour. Those are great. And then just to cap it off, we’re going to have someone talking about how investing in real estate can make you a better physician.
So I think, most of the people that are going to be presenting other than yourself, and it’s going to be fun. And what’s the cost. It’s free. Okay. I can’t make money doing that, but it’s because we want to reach as many people as possible. The live activity, which is I’ll give you the dates and the times they can come to for free.
So come take notes. We want to make sure that if somebody has a particular interest in one of these topics, they can come and join us for free. It’s on April 16 through 18, from 7 p. m. to 11 p. m. Eastern. And 3 days in a row, 12 lectures, Q and A and it will be an opportunity to buy the recordings if you like.
And yeah, I would invite since you’re participating as a speaker and you’re going to be [00:25:00] helping to promote it. I think you’ve got a, link that they can use to find out more.
Dr. Mike: Yeah, we have a link. If you’d like to register again, I highly encourage you to do even if you’re remotely interested in non traditional careers, or maybe you’re set, you like where you’re at in your your career right now, but, things can change.
We all know this. With the pandemic, sometimes our jobs aren’t as secure as what we once thought. We want to see what our different options are, and I think it’s good to be proactive. So if you’d like to go ahead and register, our link is bootstrapmd.com/ 2024summit. So that’s bootstrapmd.com/2024summit.
Somebody go ahead and get registered. You get all the information. You’ll find out who are the speakers, the topics, all that and more. It’s right there for you. Again, John, I love when you put these things on. It just opens up my eyes about what is out there. And it seems each time there’s something new.
I didn’t even know about this. Social security, I guess second look or what where you can make additional income for [00:26:00] doctors.
John Jurica: Yeah. There’s always something new coming out and it’s, someone’s gonna keep our colleagues informed. So that’s what we’re trying to do. You, we do it on our podcast and this summit’s gonna be another way to get the word out.
Dr. Mike: All right, John, I know you’re busy planning the summit and interviewing and all that. Any last minute thoughts before we end the call today?
John Jurica: I guess the last minute thought I’d go back to is what, why we started all this way back when it’s that, we’re here to help our colleagues.
You don’t need to be miserable in your job. It just, there’s no need for that, even though it’s hard work. Okay, fine. You got through the residency fellowship. Once you’re working, you should look forward to going to work. If you wake up every day, hating the thought of going to work. If you don’t like the schedule that you have, please change something.
Maybe you just need to find another location, another boss, maybe a different type of practice, whatever it is, you should be happy. You should enjoy your job every day. And so if you need to find someone like Mike or me to help you or do it on your own, but just make a change and keep looking [00:27:00] for that perfect job for yourself.
Dr. Mike: Love the words of wisdom, john. Thank you again. Thank you for spending the time with us again The non clinical summit is coming up go to BootstrapMD.com/2024summit to sign up John thank you again for joining us today.
John Jurica: It’s been my pleasure. Hope to see you again soon
Dr. Mike: And thank you all for listening. As John said, if you’re not stuck, if you feel like you’re stuck, there’s always different options that are out there. Maybe a new look, new career, new boss, new path for being a physician. As we know, there’s so many different paths to go into as you’ll learn, and you’ve just learned and you’ll be learning in the summit.
Do something every single day to keep you closer to your goals and keep moving forward.