He later sold his practice to Concentra, a large provider of urgent care and occupational medicine services that is very well-known in the urgent care arena. I know the company because when I was looking to leave my position as hospital CMO, one of the companies that interviewed me was Concentra.

The company was in the process of buying up and integrating urgent care networks. Concentra itself was acquired by Humana in 2010. It was sold by Humana to a private equity fund in 2015.

I was intrigued by Dr. Earl’s story after I became medical director of an urgent care center in 2014. I began hearing about education provided by UrgentCareMentor in 2015. I started to read the blog posts and other free content.

Dr. Earl’s company appeared to be the only online provider of occupational medicine, workers compensation and urgent care education. His material is actionable and more sophisticated than material being provided by some of the urgent care associations.

Then, in 2016, I started this blog and immersed myself in the world of physician bloggers and the technologies and tools used to create and monetize a blog or website. And, trust me, it is no simple feat to create an online presence, especially one that produces regular education and training that physicians are willing to pay for.

Larry impressed me because he is one of a small and elite cadre of physician entrepreneurs that have been able to thrive in this world of bloggers, webmasters and producers of online courses and ebooks. This group includes bloggers such as James Dahle (White Coat Investor) and consultants and coaches like Dike Drummond (The Happy MD), Helane Fronek (Doctors Coaching Doctors), Michelle Mudge-Riley (Physicians Helping Physicians) and Philippa Kennealy (Physician’s Odyssey Program and The Entrepreneurial MD).

So, let’s get to the interview…

Presenting Lawrence Earl, MD, of UrgentCareMentor

Please provide our readers with a little background about yourself.

I entered the “Target MD” 7-year combined program between the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Medical College of Wisconsin with an undergraduate degree in Medical Science.

I was a surgical resident at the Swedish Hospital program in Seattle, but realized that the surgical life wasn’t for me. I thought I might like to pursue an ER career, but there were no such residencies in Seattle at the time, so instead I started working in some of the first urgent care centers in the country.

Well, I fell in love with urgent care and never looked back.

When my wife and I started having babies we moved to my native New Jersey where I worked in a busy urgent care center (Immediate Medical Care Center or IMCC) for about 3 years.

The owner, my mentor, taught me all about the “patient experience” a decade before it became “a thing.” Delivering service beyond expectation. Delighting patients with our accessibility, efficiency and integrity.

But something was missing for me. It was a great practice but no opportunity to move ahead and the owner wasn’t looking to expand to new locations.

What was the first position you took that involved work beyond clinical practice?

A head hunter called me one day about an opportunity to become medical director for a growing group of 6 centers. The CEO, an orthopedist, was familiar with IMCC and our patient-centric focus, something he had not been able to achieve in most of their existing centers. And he wanted me to bring that to his organization. I signed on.

This was predominantly administrative, 80-90%, and allowed me to learn the “business side” of medicine, working directly with the CEO, CFO, billing managers, sales VP, etc.

I hired and trained dozens of doctors, fired a few, built new centers, did budgets, expanded services, helped with acquisitions, started a workers compensation PPO, among many other responsibilities.

We grew to 14 centers in 3 states and the group was sold in the mid 1990’s to Coastal Healthcare, a NASDAQ listed physician management company – so I was even involved in the “dog and pony” shows for prospective buyers.

[VPE – This sounds like the kind of work experience that could really fan the flames of the budding entrepreneur’s passions.]

What factors led you to seek a non-clinical job in management?

I never felt satisfied if I wasn’t able to make improvements and create growth and new opportunities.

What other jobs did you do between the first non-clinical job and your current job?

After that first group was sold, I bought two “IMCC” urgent care centers. One was the center I had left to become the medical director, mostly urgent care; the other was a former partner’s, predominantly occupational medicine, and I ran those for 16 years. We expanded to have corporate clinics, a travel clinic and 5 DOT [Department of Transportation] exam clinics.

That was sold to Concentra in 2010. I consulted for them for a year, mostly training ER docs in newly acquired centers to do occupational medicine, as well as quality audits and operations consulting.

What is your current title? What are your primary responsibilities in that role?

Today I run Urgentcarementor.com, online training and consulting for urgent care, occupational medicine, DOT Examiners and primary care practices.

Please describe your current business. How does working as an entrepreneur compare with work in a corporate setting?

Most of my work is now online or on the phone, so can be done from home or anywhere. I do sometimes make client site visits.

[VPE – What impressed me was Larry’s ability to take the work that he had done for IMCC, Concentra, and his other previous practices and transition into an Internet-based education and consulting company. Creating and running an independent business takes all of the skills of the physician executive, and then some.]

Would you advise a physician thinking about a career in management to pursue a business degree?

Yes. My experience was unusual in being able to learn business and management by my previously mentioned urgent care group medical directorship, then by running my own multi-site practice for many years.

If I was starting today, I’d want to pursue an MBA or similar business training.

What advice would you give to a young practicing physician thinking about making the transition to a leadership (management, administrative or executive) position?

As above, seek management training in healthcare administration

What do you like best about your current position?

I really enjoy teaching what I’ve learned, and what I continue to learn, about running private practices. I like that I fill a niche in the occmed and commercial driver areas that isn’t covered well in other arenas. And that I have complete freedom to work where, when and how I choose.

What would you have done differently knowing what you know now, to prepare for your career, if anything?

Seek formal management education as a younger physician.

Any other comments or advice you would like to give to readers on this subject?

Managing doctors is tough business. NPs and PAs aren’t much easier. They are all valuable and scarce and they (we) know it. Leadership for these professionals involves clear communication of organizational goals, setting expectations of provider responsibilities and practices to achieve those goals, listening to and addressing provider concerns, building consensus, measuring outcomes, and using management principles to reward positive outcomes. It also requires us to correct outliers, including disciplinary procedures when provider behavior cannot be aligned with corporate goals.

[VPE – Larry pretty much sums up the crux of leading and managing physicians, or any staff for that matter. His list of skills could be the learning objectives of a core curriculum for the executive physician!]

Wrap Up

I want to thank Larry for agreeing to be interviewed. I learned much about Larry that I didn't know! I am inspired by his ability to move from clinician and employee, to manager and leader, business owner and Internet entrepreneur.

I hope his story inspires you to explore your possible career opportunities. Working in “the trenches” in clinical medicine is a noble profession. And it can also serve as a springboard to many other fulfilling possibilities.

If you work in Urgent Care or know someone who does, I would definitely check out the educational material at UrgentCareMentor. You can join for free and take advantage of all of the free content. If you'd like to look at the latest premium content, it can be found at Occupational Medicine for Urgent Care.

If you have any follow-up questions, use the Comments to ask those and I will send them to Larry and report back in a future post. And if you have suggestions for future interviews, let me know.

Next Steps

If you haven't read them already, you may want review what I have written about seeking a non-clinical career:

• Is It Time for a Non-Clinical Career?
• Options for a Non-Clinical Career
• Does an Executive Salary Stand Up to a Clinical Salary?

You might also enjoy looking at these 30 Physician-Authored Blogs to see how others are approaching the online world of blogging.

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Thanks so much!

The post Interview With Lawrence Earl, MD, of UrgentCareMentor appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

One of the subgroups of my audience is physicians who are just starting or considering a career in management. I therefore decided to add interviews that I think will help them navigate their careers.

The interviews will be with seasoned executives in a variety of settings. To start, I will focus on my guests' background, education and experience. I will be inquiring into their opinions' about advanced degrees. And I will always include a question about their advice to emerging physician leaders.

I am thankful to Jeremy Blanchard for agreeing to participate in my first interview. I met Jeremy when we participated in the final step of the Certified Physician Executive Program in 2012. The final step in that process occurred during a three-and-a-half-day in-person evaluation that included working together in small groups. We have kept in touch ever since. I think you will enjoy reading about his leadership journey.

– John Jurica

Presenting: Jeremy Blanchard, MD, MMM, CPE, FACP, FCCP

Please provide our readers with a little background about yourself.

Since I was a boy I wanted to be a doctor. My neck was injured using forceps at delivery. Following my second neck surgery, at ten years of age, I was cared for by a wonderful physical therapist. His empathetic manner of interaction hooked me on being a physician (I thought at that time he was a doctor).

I attended the University of Montana for my undergraduate degree. I received a bachelor of science degree in zoology with a premedical emphasis. I was accepted at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine on an Army Health Professions Scholarship.

I graduated from UNM and completed my internal medicine residency at Madigan Army Medical Center, Tacoma, Washington. I served two years as a general internist at Fort Carson, Colorado Springs, Colorado, with a deployment to Haiti. When I finished my critical care fellowship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, I stayed on as an attending and later became the assistant chief of the critical care fellowship.

I also attended as a junior attending in the Neurological ICU at Johns Hopkins and helped run a neurotrauma research center at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research; I investigated traumatic head injury. During the four years post fellowship, I did mostly surgical and neurological intensive care.

I enjoyed teaching (winning the James J. Leonard Award for Excellence in Teaching Internal Medicine), research, and the clinical care of critically ill patients and their families.

What was the first position you took that involved work beyond clinical practice?

When I was at Fort Carson, I was assigned two significant leadership positions. The first was the intensive care unit medical director. With that role I began my training in management of policies, protocols and politics. Although it was only a two-year stint, the learning curve was steep with the challenges of managing multiple providers with wide breadths of skill level in the competencies of caring for critically ill patients. We used education, protocols and policies to try to establish a consistent level of care.

The second leadership role was that of a battalion surgeon for the 52nd Engineers, Combat Heavy. With my deployment to Haiti I was assigned two battalions in country and had to develop preventive medicine plans, public health plans and triage/care protocols. I also had a steep learning curve when it came to managing people, including workplace relationships, dereliction of duty, media training, evaluations and the logistics of stocking and managing supplies. In the end, I was unaware of the quality of leadership training I was receiving.

What factors led you to seek a non-clinical job in management?

I have always been interested in supporting and managing change. Like many leaders, I held leadership roles in high school and college. But my most significant decision, moving me from a clinician to a formal leader, happened in 2006; I was a hospital employed intensivist and a colleague of mine was forcefully influencing our critical care team to head in a direction I found unacceptable. Secondarily, I sought the formal leadership role and in the end was required to ask that colleague to leave our practice.

The situation was of such a serious nature that I was granted a restraining order against my colleague and his physician spouse. It led to team fragmentation. I see this moment as one of the most significant developments in my career. I dealt with the situation and the aftermath with recognized professionalism and grace. It was there I adopted one of my favorite quotes: “Adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.” Barry Melrose, ESPN Hockey Analyst.

This experience hardwired my leadership focus, commitment and openness to learning. I recognized important change is seldom free and requires engagement, respect, accountability, courage and kindness. That ICU team rose to become truly excellent – no nurse turnover in 2008, ranked number one on APACHE Outcomes scoring of quality and cost (compared with 137 other like ICUs) and adopted a cultural paradigm shift focused on preserving the wellness of our critically ill patients.

What is your current title? What are your primary responsibilities in that role?

My current title is the chief medical officer (CMO) of The Language of Caring, LLC. The Language of Caring is a well-renowned consulting firm that specializes in helping everyone in healthcare communicate effectively – with empathy, engagement, mindfulness, and compassion. We work with people in hospitals, systems, medical practices and the like – all with the purpose of improving the patient, family, physician and staff experience.

The CMO role is a newly created role. I have four major responsibilities which include: innovation/growth, infrastructure development, product development and client relationship development. All my work is done in a collaborative team approach.

What other jobs did you do between the first non-clinical job and your current job?

I have served in multiple leadership positions of varying types and levels of responsibility. They include:

• Assistant Chief, Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s critical care fellowship
• Member, Washington DC Chapter Board of Directors, Society of Critical Care Medicine
• Chair, Uniformed Services Chapter, Society of Critical Care Medicine
• Assistant Professor, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS)
• Deputy Director, Critical Care Division, USUHS
• Medical Director, Intensive Care Unit, Kadlec Regional Medical Center
• Medical Director, Intensivist Program, Kadlec Regional Medical Center*
• Chair, Physician Governing Board, Kadlec Regional Medical Center*
• Medical Director, Hospitalist Program, Kadlec Regional Medical Center
• President-elect, Kadlec Regional Medical Center Medical Staff, (first employed physician to take that role)
• CEO and founder, Joy of Life Tool**
• VP of Quality and Medical Affairs, PeaceHealth St Joseph Medical Center*
• VP of Quality and Medical Affairs, North West Region, PeaceHealth*
• CMO, St James Healthcare, Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health
• CMO, The Language of Caring, LLC*
• Chair, CMO Committee, Montana Medical Association*

[JJ – an impressive list! – *each of these was a newly established position – ** no longer available]

When and where did you acquire your business/management degree?

I received my Masters in Medical Management (MMM) with an emphasis in entrepreneurialism from the University of Southern California (USC), Marshall School of Business, in 2011, and was awarded Beta Gamma Sigma.

How helpful has your management degree been in your current work?

Extremely helpful from at least 3 different perspectives:

• Managerial and business knowledge: I gained much greater understanding of how to management quality improvement, much-needed insight into strategy, healthcare finances, human resources/people management, media interactions and statistics.
• Leadership: When I attended my MMM I had never served in an executive role. Up to that point my leadership style was more dictatorial than I would like to admit. The leadership training, focus and practice helped me learn other leadership styles, essential to my future career endeavors. Because of this, and iterative experiences, my preferred leadership style is that of a servant leader (still a work in progress).
• Entrepreneurialism: Up until attending my MMM I had not identified my thought process, approach to problems and interests as entrepreneur and intrapreneur in nature.

To summarize, the training and exposure I had in my master’s, especially leadership and entrepreneurism, continue to be huge influencers of my success, enthusiasm and joy of work. The managerial skills were very important and I would not have advanced and gained credibility as an executive without them.

How would you describe the experience with the following aspects of your graduate school degree?

Quality of instruction:

The professors at USC were incredible. They provided the best educational experience of my formal education life. Big callouts would go to Tom O’Malia (entrepreneurism), Merle Hopkins (finance), Dave Logan (business and social relations), Dolores Conway (statistics), etc. They were truly fabulous. Although my colleagues in attendance would have to be recognized as well, I learned so much from them.

Flexibility of the schedule:

The MMM at USC was great. We did four in-residence sessions and the rest was on-line. The in-residence was not flexible, but the on-line allowed us to complete our work at our convenience.

Faculty:

The faculty loved interacting with us and was always available, interested in helping us. The curriculum was challenging, but this was eased by their investment in us and their desire for us to be successful.

Overall value:

This degree was priceless for me. Without it I would have been limited and not successful as a physician executive.

Would you advise a physician thinking about a career in management to pursue a business degree? If so, which degree do you think is most appropriate (the MBA or MMM)?

I would advise a physician interested in a career in management and leadership to pursue a graduate degree in business. I think either degree is excellent. I personally like mine, the MMM, because I am interested in healthcare, not other businesses; healthcare is in many ways a unique business model and I wanted to be able to delve into these differences.

I also wanted my classmates to be other physicians, I felt I would learn a great deal from them. Lastly, I was interested in the entrepreneurism and the program married my two needs. I do not have strong feelings over which degree is better, I think that is based on the interests of the party who is seeking this education.

You are a certified physician executive (CPE) through the CCMM. Do you find that the CPE is beneficial?

I find the CPE beneficial in a couple of ways.

• It formally recognizes my competencies as a physician executive.
• In some healthcare arenas, board certification is required to work for the institution in question. The CPE is a board certification and can meet that requirement. As my clinical board ends, I find this valuable.

What advice would you give to a young practicing physician considering making the transition to a management, administrative or executive position?

My advice would be to seek a professional coach in this transition. A key to this approach is the physician interviewing the coach to assure a compatibility. I have had four professional coaches during my leadership journey. All have been paid for by the institution and all negotiated by me. Two have had set “curriculums.” This doesn’t work well for me.

Also, I firmly believe in the Hogan Assessment over StrengthsFinder, Myers-Briggs, etc. I like the Hogan Assessment because it identifies my strengths which overplayed “derail” my effectiveness.

The second most important thing is, do a deep dive into the culture to assure you will be comfortable there. I have failed at this on one occasion and it was extremely painful.

I wrote an article published in the January 2017 Physician Leadership Journal regarding the successful transition from a clinician to a physician executive.

What do you like best about your current position?

I love ending each day feeling fulfilled, like “today I worked towards making a difference, making the world a better place for my colleagues and patients.” In my institutional CMO roles I found I did not have as much fulfillment as I had hoped. A lot of my work was managing fires and political issues.

I am good at this, so there was plenty of success, but when I measured how many days of fulfillment I had for every 10 days of work, I only had three. I wanted eight. Now I have that. The Language of Caring programs make a demonstrable difference and I am excited to be a contributor to that outcome.

Do you have any regrets regarding your career choices?

None. I have loved, or at the worst learned, every step of the way. I feel like I have made a difference and maintained my integrity and positive outlook. The professional journey has been my focus. This is extremely helpful, because destinations are never as much fun as the journey.

Where I will end up, I have no idea. And I am good with that. The Language of Caring has been the best job I have had so far. I say this for 3 reasons:

1. I feel the work is important, and the tools are effective,
2. I love the people I work with and for – they are kind, competent and wonderful, and
3. I am continually learning and feel like a valued member of the team.

Any other comments or advice you would like to give to readers?

• Recognize life is a journey. The power is in the questions rather than the answers. What I mean by this is, enjoy your journey, be present and you will find the best opportunity for fulfillment. I like questions over answers, because that is how I learn and see the world from a different perspective; this is a new recognition for me, but very powerful.
• Always assume good intent, this allows you to enter conversations and interactions with the nonverbal expression that assures the best chance of a positive ending.
• Be kind and still recognize not every good person is right for every good program. When I have asked folks to leave their present position, I do so recognizing this is not the right role for them, and if they stay they will not be fulfilled and it is likely the team will not successfully achieve their potential.
• I am still learning this one: “There is limited air time in all conversations and meetings, the more you consume the less you learn from others.”
• Vulnerability is a strength, insecurity is a malignancy for effective leadership. Have fun and be the best version of yourself!

Wrap Up

I really want to thank Jeremy for agreeing to be interviewed. I learned much about Jeremy that I did not know!

If you have any follow-up questions, use the Comments to ask those and I will send them to Jeremy and report back in a future post. And if you have suggestions for future interviews, let me know.

For more of my thoughts on healthcare and leadership Subscribe here.

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Feel free to email me directly at john.jurica.md@gmail.com with any questions about anything. I am here to help you excel as a physician leader.

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Thanks so much and see you in the next post!

The post Interview with Jeremy Blanchard from Language of Caring appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.