Specialty Spotlight: Orthopedic Surgery With NFL Team Doctor Karim Meijer, MD

July 20, 2022

This episode’s specialty spotlight is Orthopedic Surgery. We are joined by orthopedic surgeon, sports medicine specialist, and current Head Team Physician for the New Orleans Saints, Dr. Karim Meijer! Dr. Meijer shares how his experience as a University of Texas football player turned into his passion for helping patients achieve the active lifestyle they desire. We discuss the impact health insurance has on patient care, and private practices vs. private equity in orthopedics.

Listen to the full episode using the player below, or by visiting one of the links below. Below is the episode’s transcript which has been edited for readability. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, email us at info@byrdadatto.com.

Transcript

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Legal 123s with ByrdAdatto. Legal issues simplified through real client stories and real world experiences. Creating simplicity in 3, 2, 1.

Brad: Welcome back to another episode of the Legal 123s with ByrdAdatto. I’m your host Brad Adatto with my cohost Michael Byrd.

Michael: Thanks Brad. As a business and healthcare law firm, we represent clients in multiple sectors and multiple specialties, obviously, especially healthcare.

Brad: Yep, we do.

Michael: This season our theme is specialty spotlight, where each episode we’ll visit about some of the nuances that can be found from a business and healthcare perspective in the various practice specialties.

Brad: Well, Michael, before we shine a light on today’s guests, let’s go to my favorite place.

Michael: Brad, I think we may scare people. Are you, in the middle of recording a show, wanting to start talking about your favorite watering hole, R&D kitchen? [00:01:00]

Brad: Okay, well, first off that is a true fact. R&D kitchen is a great watering hole. No, you and I both love talking about sports. I can rarely remember an actual day, we’re in the hallway or just bumping into each other, we just start talking about the latest game, what players are doing, did you catch this score? That score? I mean, we just love talking about it.

Michael: I do. It’s also painful. My heart bleeds orange with the Longhorns and the Dallas Cowboys. It’s been a rough stretch so, it’s a painful topic, but yes, we do talk about it every day.

Brad: Right, and so both being big sporties, at some point my question to you, Michael, and don’t worry no one else is listening so whatever you say no one’s going to hear it, did you ever dream of playing a sport at the next level?

Michael: Well, first of all, Brad, I don’t know what a sportie is. We’ll have to set that aside for a moment. Are you about to go down this whole, I got recruited to play football in college thing again? [00:02:00]

Brad: First it is true. I did get recruited to play football in college. Although, obviously I didn’t go and do that, I mean, as a kid, you had to have some wish of whatever that professional league was.

Michael: Well, so don’t tell anyone.

Brad: Okay, no one’s looking.

Michael: When I was in sixth grade, I was so obsessed with the Dallas Cowboys that I once woke up and was depressed the entire day because I realized that what I was dreaming was not true. I was dreaming that I was the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys and we just won the Super bowl and it felt as real as any dream I’ve ever had and I woke up to just being a sixth grader.

Brad: Yeah.

Michael: And being me.

Brad: Yeah, that’s a problem by itself.

Michael: What about you?

Brad: In shocking news, I know this is a surprise to you and our listening audience, I also wanted to play football and I wanted to play running back for the New Orleans Saints. That would have been my dream job.

Michael: Okay, well, a true [00:03:00] confession. I’m glad no one’s listening.

Brad: Just sidebar for our audience, I do have a little Saints gear in today’s show, by the way.

Michael: Yeah. For those of you looking, it’s a nice distraction from Brad’s face, you’re going to see the hat to the side. What does your dream of being a New Orleans Saints running back have to do with today’s show?

Brad: Well, unlike you and me, today’s guest was able to play football in college at the University of Texas and was also a player for the 2005 national championship team.

Michael: Whoa. Oh wait. We should have been leading with this and that’s not just a national championship team and it’s not just the last time one of my teams had success, so it’s been a minute. Many say it’s the greatest college football game in college football history and I think it’s a fact. The only sad part about that was I [00:04:00] had gotten invited and had a ticket to go and was not able to go and regret that to this day.

Brad: Yes. Well, Michael, I think the other funny thing about today is that with today’s guests, he was able to parlay his playing days, which obviously was a passion of his, but his other passion, which is medicine, and now he’s actually employed by an NFL team so let’s bring on today’s guests.

Michael: It’s going to be fun. Today we are joined by Dr. Karim Meijer. He is board certified, fellowship trained orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist. Brad, I think I need your New Orleans to…

Brad: Ochsner Sports Medicine Institute.

Michael: Okay, thank you. I would have not had the right flare when I did that. 

Brad: Yeah.

Michael: His practice focuses on arthroscopic and reconstructive surgery of the shoulder, elbow and knee. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Texas. [00:05:00] P.S. Not only did he play football and I didn’t, I didn’t also graduate with those titles.

Brad: Those titles?

Michael: Yes. He attended medical school at UT Southwestern in Dallas, where he was elected to the alpha omega alpha honor society. He completed his orthopedic residency at Louisiana State University in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was selected by Dr. James Andrews for a sports medicine fellowship. He published his research in many peer review journals and contributed to a textbook chapter concerning elbow injuries and throwing athletes. He remains active in sports medicine research and many professional societies. He is married with three children. He lives in New Orleans. Okay, Brad, now I know why Karim is on. He’s the head team physician for the New Orleans Saints. Karim, welcome.

Karim: Well, thank you. Nice introduction, I appreciate that. [00:06:00] Michael, I’m sorry you could not go to the game.

Michael: Me too. Me too.

Brad: Well, that’s something where we need to start right now, Karim, here we are, we got this guy who always says hook ‘em after every single time you hear the word “UT” somewhere. This supposedly big fan, and for those who are listening, I’m using air quotes. He has a ticket to go to the Rose Bowl to see the national championship game. He doesn’t go, against USC. Since he couldn’t go, maybe someone who played in the game itself could tell us, what was that like?

Karim: Yeah, looking back it was crazy because this was actually pre-social media days, if you think about it. The amount of hype that game probably would have had would have been incredible because we spent the whole, whatever it is, months leading up to the game just listening to USC is the greatest team ever assembled.

Brad: Yes.

Karim: This is the greatest dynasty. I mean, they didn’t [00:07:00] even talk about us. It was more about they’re the greatest assembly of college football. They hadn’t lost a game in like three years. They had won two back to back national championships. They were going to go for a third. They had two Heisman trophy winners in the backfield. We were just kind of the afterthought, so we spent the whole month listening about that. There was just a different vibe around our team and Vince led that and I was at the right place at the right time with a really good group of guys. Getting to Pasadena, we’d already been there, we were there the year before so it wasn’t shocking at all; it was kind of like just a business trip. We’d already done everything; we’d already played there; we’d already been there, staying in the same place. It was literally like a business trip and getting to that game, I don’t think anybody on our team thought we were going to lose. I don’t even think when we were down in the fourth quarter, anybody thought we were going to lose. In fact, I never saw the game, the TV copy until probably like 6, 7, 8 months later after the game ended and I [00:08:00] watched the TV copy and I’m like, man, did we lose? We’re gonna lose. We’re gonna lose because when you listen to it, they make it so much more intense than when you’re just out there playing. You kinda know what’s going on. It’s just a different feel listening and watching versus just being there on the field, playing in the game. Yeah, I mean, pretty amazing. Like Michael said, yeah, maybe it is, I don’t know, that’s not for me to judge, but maybe it is one of the greatest college football games of all time.

Brad: I’ve unfortunately been at his house before, Karim, when he had it playing on a DVD and as he said, right now it looks like we’re going to lose this game, anyone want to take a bet?

Karim: I got it.

Michael: It feels that way. Yeah.

Karim: Yep. No doubt. No, it was fun. It was great. What Coach Brown told us and I think there’s a famous TV copy of it after the game, he pretty much came in the locker room after the game and just said, hey, look, just make sure this is the greatest athletic accomplishment in your life, but not the [00:09:00] greatest thing that’s ever happened to you in your life, which is true. I will have a lot of other blessings, marrying my wife, my kids, family things I’ve been able to do, career wise things, and so from an athletic standpoint, yeah, that was it. It’s really easy as an athlete, if that’s the last day you ever play. It’s just an easy way to walk away from the game because I literally graduated in December and we played in January. I actually left the jersey dirty, the team framed it, they made a big kind of frame, and I left the grass stains, everything. They framed it up and gave it to me as a gift. It’s kind of a nice little remembrance and yeah last day I was ever at the University of Texas.

Michael: That’s amazing. Well, and I’m curious, I mean, it seems intuitive. I would think, as a college football athlete, you go into sports medicine. Is that what drew you into this as a specialty, that passion? Tell us more about what kind of got you?

Karim: Well, [00:10:00] I have actually a finance degree. I thought I was going to be a business guy and that’s what my brother did. Playing football, I got hurt. I had no doctors in my family. Didn’t really know what doctors really did, to be honest with you. Didn’t really know all the specialties. Didn’t know anything about it. Met our team orthopedic surgeon who traveled with the team and I got hurt. I had injuries myself and I was like, well, what do you do? You take care of athletes and just kind of put us back together and you just let me do what I love. I’m like, that sounds interesting. I was in the business program at Texas. I started just with, what do I got to do? He’s like, well, you got to be pre-med and you got to do this. I just started adding those classes. You’re there, you’re in summer school, you had your training so you have the time. UT gives you all the resources under the sun. You can schedule classes early, you have summer school. I did all that stuff and I was like, you know what? Maybe I’ll do this. This sounds interesting. I got decent grades. Let me pursue the orthopedic part. Well, there’s a big jump, let me tell you from being a college football player who thinks he likes what his [00:11:00] orthopedic surgeon, team doc does to then get into that position. Let’s say I’m in college, I’m at the 22nd grade maybe. No, what am I? I’d be at the 12th, 16th grade. Let’s call it the 16th grade. You got to graduate the 26th. There’s a decade in between at a minimum of what that person treating you, before you step into those footsteps. That’s the very long-winded part that I had no idea about to go through. I knew the pathway, I knew the end goal and I got there, so I don’t want to go through it again.

Michael: Well, that’s interesting too.

Brad: Yeah.

Michael: I think about, so you went to UT Southwestern right? Is that where you went to medical school?

Karim: I did. Yeah. Actually, there’s a UT story to that as well.

Michael: Oh really?

Karim: Oh, yeah. I don’t know where to go to med school, right? I don’t know anything about it. I’m like the only guy on the team that’s going to med school. I don’t have friends. I’m barely doing [00:12:00] pre-med so I’m not like connected in that community so I’m like, where do I go? University of Texas, and really the state of Texas does a great job of funding the programs so your cost to become a doctor is so much less in the state of Texas. I even tell students here, don’t seek out of state places just for medical school just because you think it’s going to be this holy grail. You’re going to be burdened with a ton of debt and everything else. If you can stay in state and the state of Texas helps you out, it’s a hell of a lot better. All right. I got kids here in school and Brad knows this. Brad knows the public school system here is a little bit different. A lot of kids, you say private school, it sounds hoity toity, but it’s kind of like the norm, it’s like everybody goes, but I’m going to produce a fourth grader and a second grader for what it took me to become a doctor.

Brad: Yeah. By the way, his kids go to the school I went to, Country Day. It’s the smallest worlds.

Karim: That’s as crazy as it sounds. [00:13:00] Anyway, so talking about the schooling, so the UT connection to just kind of sum this up, a linebacker on my team, his aunt was the Dean of students at UT Southwestern.

Michael: Wow.

Karim: She found out I want to go to med school. They only interviewed on Saturdays in the fall. Okay. Saturdays in the fall, I’m not exactly available. The UT Southwestern folks were like, well, we’ll compromise. We’ll meet you in Waco or we’ll do it on a weekday. They were like the only med school that I’m like, man, this is the place to go. These people, it’s a great medical school. It’s fantastic. Its top ranked. I mean, no brainer. That’s how I got there.

Michael: That’s amazing. Was it, would you say, unique that you kind of knew where you wanted to end up from a specialty perspective when you’re in med school, do most kind of trying to find their way?

Karim: Yeah. I think, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t do anything else, but what I do, this job. I [00:14:00] wouldn’t be a total joint surgeon. I wouldn’t be a hand surgeon. I wouldn’t even do anything within orthopedics. I literally love only what I do and nothing else so I wouldn’t do any other specialty whatsoever. I don’t know what the majority of other students come in. I just kind of found my way up. That’s what I’m going to do. That’s my job. I’m doing that.

Brad: Well, I mean, that’s so fascinating, on that subject alone I probably could spend 20 minutes, but I want to ask you, so now you’ve already established the fact of as you said, becoming an orthopedic surgeon. If you look back at how hard you had to work, probably the biggest challenge you face at that point in your career is actually getting to that point. Now that you’re in this specialty, working in sports medicine and working as an orthopedic, what are some of these patient challenges that you see in this particular specialty?

Karim: Are you talking about it as in what? There’s so many ways to answer that question.

Brad: What’s the biggest one you run into and your specialty when it comes to these patients? [00:15:00]

Karim: From a medical standpoint or like just a healthcare delivery business model standpoint for patients?

Brad: It’s your cue. You get to choose.

Karim: Okay. I think from a patient standpoint, patient challenges, I think health insurance is a nightmare. It’s a nightmare to navigate. It’s a nightmare for me. It’s a nightmare for them. I just left clinic. Okay. I had a lady who was employed and then changed jobs, but didn’t have health insurance at the time, and then has a knee injury, but can’t get seen anywhere, so she’s been dealing with a very swollen knee, difficulty, can’t move around. She’s bouncing from doctor to doctor. Called one doctor’s office, I’ll just pay cash, will you see me? They didn’t even understand how that would work and they literally just said, no, we’re not going to go down that pathway with her. She finally gets insurance. Now she sees me. That is a nightmare for patients in a way and then for physicians. I dealt with problems. I dealt with insurance contracts and every insurance company gives you different contracts. [00:16:00] If you’re not under the same idea as the rest of your practice and you join a different plan, you’re going to get a different plan and you may get a different plan from your partner and your partner may have been in practice longer than you and his plan is worse than yours, it is a total nightmare. I guess the way I sum it up is insurance companies don’t provide healthcare. I provide healthcare, they process claims and they need to understand your role is to process claims. I provide healthcare. They, which is unbelievable to me, have stolen my product and when, I mean, mine, not me personally, but my fellow physicians, my fellow PAs, my fellow nurse practitioners, physical therapists. They have stolen our product, packaged it into a financial vehicle and then sold it to the public with the perception that they provide healthcare, which is so far from the truth.

Michael: That’s crazy. Well, and then kind of thinking about not only your specialty, but your practice, you have a role as a team doctor, and then you have a [00:17:00] private practice. How do those two work together? I mean, how do you, how’s that?

Karim: I wear two different hats. I have a life with the Saints and then I chose to work at Ochsner. I can work anywhere. That was the best fit for me to do what I wanted to do kind of in the city. They were the best partner, no doubt. I have two different roles and with the Saints, insurance is kind of out the door. I practice sports medicine, a hundred miles an hour. In other words, there’s no barriers to me. It’s like the holy grail of practicing sports medicine. If I think I want to do something, I get it done. If I need that image, it gets done. If I want this piece of equipment to do this for my players, I get it done. I’m able to push the envelope and do things with them with zero barriers. The way I think everyday patients would absolutely love to be treated. Then, I had worked in the real world at Ochsner, and [00:18:00] I don’t want to say it’s a dichotomy because Ochsner is great and they give you a lot of the resources I need to do the job, but it’s nowhere near the speed of what I can do managing an NFL team.

Michael: That’s fascinating because I can only imagine, what that’s gotta be like, being able to render care in this uninhibited way in one moment, and then the next you’ve got kind of these real world, as you say, limitations that affect how you could care for a patient when you could probably be doing something a little more aggressive.

Karim: Little tiny example of that, yesterday I had to do a distal bicep rupture on a patient, and I usually will prescribe a medication to help prevent bone formation. Medicine’s been on the market for 50 years. Generic, insurance company denied it, wants to do a pre-authorization and all this other stuff, wasting everybody’s time for [00:19:00] no other reason than that somebody’s knee jerk reaction did that and it’s like what are we doing here? It eventually gets approved, but it’s a waste of my time, my assistant’s time, its paperwork, it’s just a joke, you know?

Michael: I mean, I think that insurance is clearly not only a big patient challenge, it’s a big business challenge for the practice. Are there some other kind of business challenges you face doing kind of your niche practice that would be helpful for the audience? Especially someone thinking about coming into this type of practice.

Karim: I think it’s the definition of practices. Are you in private practice? Are you employed? Private equities all over the place now. There’s a lot of different moving parts and everybody’s trying to get a piece of the pie. At the end of the day, it’s the doctors, it’s our business. Look, I’m sitting with two attorneys, you guys run your business. There’s no [00:20:00] third party payer. Ask Brad, when I write the checks, it isn’t going through some insurance company it’s going straight to Brad. Okay.

Brad: Hey Karim, Michael doesn’t know I represent you. That’s actually really been going straight to me. I haven’t been sharing anything with him.

Karim: You know what I mean? They’re just barriers and now I think you almost have to be on three sides of this fence here, or three sided triangle. Let’s just call it this. In my mind, you have to be maximally fully employed with a mega system. You have to be fully private practice and integrate vertically and horizontally to be successful today, or you’re selling out to a private equity and letting that piece of it work that way. I think that’s where it’s at. I think if you’re stuck in between any of those three little kind of triangles, you’re kind of in a bad place. I’m not sure which one of those is going to be the future of it, but I think you see the trends, how more and more physicians are being employed, private [00:21:00] practices getting more difficult. You’re seeing the stresses on private practices. What I hope is that you’re not seeing lessening of indications. What I mean by that is, are they doing things that are not the right thing for the patient? Are they starting to offer services they shouldn’t be offering? Are they pushing the envelope on certain things? Are they getting involved in things just for the quick buck because the insurance companies are making it so difficult to sustain a private practice model, you know? You can’t just be a physician. You have to be a little bit of a businessman to understand everything. It’s challenging, but I think it’s challenging on all fronts. Being in the employed model, there are some things we deal with and I’m sure, I’ve heard it from friends of mine in the private equity model, there’s going to be some things there that are going to shake up. I think more though, I don’t want to say it’s new to the game, but I don’t think it’s like some of the other specialties. I think you’ve seen it a lot more than the other ones.

Brad: I would say the only other thing I was thinking of as you were talking about that, a lot of times when you talk to [00:22:00] physicians their major is biology or chemistry or whatever it is. You having a finance degree has to have been a huge help just from having the business sense when you’re working. I mean, obviously you have to have the skillset to be a physician, no matter what, but then that business hat that you have to put on, having that finance degree must have been huge for you.

Karim: Well, you at least understand what the other side of the tables thinking, you know what they’re looking at, you could just see, look huge pet peeve of mine, I’m not a provider. Don’t call me damn provider. Okay. I’m a physician. The whole connotation of calling people providers commoditizes the person. You’re a provider of a healthcare service. That sounds like a businessperson. Okay. I’m old school, it’s a doctor or a physician. I graduated the 26th grade. I think I earned that title. You’re an attorney, it’s like, well, I don’t even know what we would call you? You’re legal providers. Both of you [00:23:00] guys are legal providers. Great. Good for you. I’m glad you guys spent all those hard hours studying and that’s what you get called. It seems simple, but I mean, it kind of sets the basis of the fundamental of kind of what we’re dealing with in this country. Calling us that no, it’s a physician assistant. He or she earned that role. It’s a physical therapist. Those things wear me out, drives me nuts because it commoditizes that person who’s really the only one driving the engine of that practice. There’s no CPT code for administrators, I think the last I checked, so there has to be just some basic level of respect and understanding that healthcare should be driven by the people that actually provide the healthcare.

Brad: When we started this and hearing about obviously, having those different hats that you wear, knowing that you obviously work with the Saints and then having that private practice, you can really [00:24:00] tell you’re passionate about just really wanting to treat patients ultimately and having those other people get out of your way because, as you said, working at the Saints’ facility, you get to treat the patients, as you seem best, not as someone else does.

Karim: No, and don’t get me wrong, that’s why I chose Ochsner. It was the best fit for me to do. It’s kind of like the 30,000 foot view and then where your practice is, but globally healthcare in the United States, you’re just seeing how it’s moved, how the model has moved.

Brad: Yeah.

Karim: Brad, you know better than anything, your dad, I mean you lived in this. Your dad and I used to interview med students together.

Brad: That’s right.

Karim: So, I get it. It’s different and I just don’t know where this is sustainable for the, just the overall con, when you think of mega corporations getting bigger and health insurance is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and consolidating more premiums are going up. They aren’t going down. I had to deal with it in private practice, we had [00:25:00] 20, 30 employees or whatever so we were a small business. You see the pressures, you see what goes on and believe me, United Healthcare never gave me an increase. I didn’t get a 1% raise ever, ever from them. What, your employees don’t want a 1% increase? You don’t think the rent goes up at wherever you’re at? You don’t think the cost of living goes up? I mean, come on.

Brad: Yeah. Well, I think we’re going to get ready to sign off, but I guess for our audience, being a football player, going into orthopedics, we were talking about dream jobs, is this the dream job? Being the head physician for an NFL team. In that case the best NFL team, of course the Saints. Is this the dream job that you never thought, as you said, you were contrary to football and finance and all of a sudden you have this job, is it amazing for you?

Karim: So look, it is a dream job, right? It’s great, but it’s not the end. Dr. Andrews used to always tell me, he’s like, if you’re talking about what you did yesterday, you’re doing nothing today. [00:26:00] You got to keep moving, so I got to keep pushing forward and seek. It’s not that I got here and I’m happy, pat myself on the back, its press on. To me, this is the beginning. This isn’t like I got there and the end. There’s a lot of stuff to help the Saints, do the best I can, provide the best value to them. With Ochsner, do the best I can with that system and look to put a plug, we just partnered with Dr. Andrews. We just entered a five-year agreement with him to be joining us to then hopefully launch probably the premier sports medicine complex, is really what it’s going to end up becoming hopefully, in the country where you can blend all these organizations, all these just fantastic people and then bringing in Dr. Andrews to partner with this and grow something big. I mean, that’s what I’m excited about.

Michael: Yeah. That’s incredible. I love hearing your story and so much of your story overlaps with so much of what Brad and I care about.

Karim: The Saints and the Longhorns. [00:27:00]

Brad: Well, you got a little bit of tigers in there too when you went to LSU. Oh, there you go. He’s got an LSU, a golf ball for our audience.

Karim: I don’t know how I got that.

Brad: A good combination.

Michael: Yeah, so what we’ll do next, Karim, it was just a pleasure talking with you today, is we’ll say goodbye and then we’ll go into commercial and then on the other side, Brad and I will do a little bit of a legal wrap-up, but we really appreciate the time.

Karim: Yeah, you got it guys. Keep doing the job and all the best with you guys. Have nothing but success on the show.

Brad: Thank you.

Michael: Thank you.

Karim: If your ratings drop don’t blame me on this. Alright, see y’all. Y’all take care.

Access+: Many business owners use legal counsel as a last resort, rather than as a proactive tool that can further their success. Why? For most, it’s the fear of unknown legal costs. ByrdAdatto’s Access+ [00:28:00] program makes it possible for you to get the ongoing legal assistance you need for one predictable monthly fee. That gives you unlimited phone and email access to the legal team so you can receive feedback on legal concerns as they arise. Access+, a smarter, simpler way to access legal services. Find out more. Visit byrdadatto.com today.

Brad: Welcome back to Legal 123s with ByrdAdatto. I’m your host Brad Adatto with my cohost Michael Byrd. Now Michael, our season’s theme this year is specialty spotlight and what a specialty spotlight we had today. I mean, we had the Saints, he’s also a physician and he’s also the head physician of the Saints. With Karim coming on, this is the problem with our podcast being around 30 minutes, I could have gone and I could’ve kept going and listened to his stories.

Michael: We say that every week.

Brad: I know it’s amazing. Hopefully our audience enjoys as much as we are having so much fun with these great specialists coming on. He said so many really interesting things about just in [00:29:00] general, about the practice of medicine and the industry as a whole. I think our audience hopefully heard that he was kind of breaking down the different buckets you could fall into, the private practice side, the hospital side, the PE side, in his case, NFL team side, but for our audience because of our time left, why don’t we just focus on just one of the pros and cons of one of them and because so many of our clients are falling into that bucket of working for these large systems or hospital systems, why don’t you give us some pros and cons on that one, Michael.

Michael: Yeah, so you’re going to be employed by a hospital and this is one of those specialties, as you mentioned that you actually see private practices, you see the private equity. Some don’t have a choice, some are going to be there. Regardless, if you’re a hospital employee, there’s some pros and cons. The pros are you typically are going to have more security, a higher initial guaranteed salary, and just from a financial perspective, more stability, less expectation on [00:30:00] the administrative business, like running a business side. You may have some administrative responsibilities, but not the running a small business type responsibilities.

Brad: Yeah.

Michael: The cons are, if you are an entrepreneurial type person, then it’s not really the best environment to cultivate that because you’re reporting to other people. I mean, you have, obviously, your patient care that you’re in charge of but when it comes to the business of whatever your specialty is there’s going to be others that are going to be in charge of that.

Brad: Yeah, I totally agree with that and a quick summary, and I know that we could spend another 45 minutes on this alone, but unfortunately we’re basically out of time today because that’s just how it goes with these awesome guests coming on. Guess what? Everyone out there, next Wednesday we’ll be back again with another show on the specialty spotlight. Next week we’re focused on plastic surgery with our good friend, Dr. Brad Calobrace. Thanks again for joining us today and remember, if you liked this [00:31:00] episode, please subscribe. Make sure to give us a five star rating and share with your friends.

Michael: You can also sign up for the ByrdAdatto newsletter by going to our website at byrdadatto.com.

Outro: ByrdAdatto is providing this podcast as a public service. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast does not constitute legal advice, nor does it establish an attorney, client relationship. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by ByrdAdatto. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please consult with an attorney on your legal issues.

ByrdAdatto founding partner Michael Byrd

Michael S. Byrd

ByrdAdatto Founding Partner Bradford E. Adatto

Bradford E. Adatto

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