Dr. Neil Baum Debuts Video Series

Practice Pain Relievers

An introduction to Dr. Neil Baum, urologist and medical practice marketing genius

In this edition of “The Wired Practice,” Dr. Neil Baum debuts Vanguard’s new series, “Practice Pain Relievers” that aims to eliminate the pain of practice operations and bring joy back to doctoring.

Video transcript

Hi, I’m Dr. Neil Baum, a New Orleans urologist with 40 years experience in private practice. Among the many important lessons I’ve learned in my career is this one: Every physician is motivated in one of two ways – to either move away from pain or move towards pleasure. This is kind of like the concept of heaven and hell that most religions promote. A doctor who does well, is profitable and has satisfied patients goes to “medical heaven.” A doctor who has unhappy patients, unhappy staff, and who is not making a profit probably feels like he or she is in “medical hell.”

In this series of videos titled Practice Pain Relievers, I hope to show you new ways to attain medical heaven. We didn’t go through years of specialized education and training to spend our days fretting about onerous paperwork, administrative chores, the insurance bureaucracy, the failures of electronic medical records, managing difficult employees, and keeping up with government regulations. We became doctors to help people. Speaking from experience, I can tell you that even with all the changes to the practice of medicine today, you can still find much more pleasure than pain as a healthcare provider.

Get more joy out of doctoring

My videos aim to help you eliminate the pain of practice, to bring more joy to your work as a healer. Among many topics I will cover, we’ll look at time management techniques and keeping your day on schedule; growing your practice through ethical marketing; how to recruit and keep the best employees; and cultivating lasting patient trust and loyalty.

We’ll also cover the subjects of creating value from the patient’s point of view, applying basic math to the business of medicine, managing patients’ online reviews of your practice, and re-engineering the place where the wrong first impressions are often created – the waiting room. And we’ll take a deep dive into one of the most problematic technologies in healthcare today: the telephone, and how to use it differently for building your practice and business.

In short, through these videos I will share professional, personal and business lessons I’ve learned in four decades of practice – sometimes the hard way – that medical schools almost never teach. For a very long time my work has been taking care of patients. Now much of my work is to help take care of other doctors. I hope you’ll find the Practice Pain Relievers series valuable in your daily role in what I consider the most rewarding profession possible, the profession of care.