www.independent-practitioner-today.co.uk
November 2017 Issue 96
INDEPENDENT PRACTITIONER TODAY
The business journal for doctors in private practice
In this issue
Breathe in ... and relax
A look at how we use coping strategies for stress and whether they work P18
What do patients think of you?
Dealing with patient testimonials in private practice P28
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A 2018 wallplanner
Racing towards tax-efficient cars
A look at the current position for those buying a car regarded as tax-efficient P50
Salary option ‘surging’
By Robin Stride
Doctors’ expressions of interest in working on a salaried basis in a new flagship private hospital has gone through the four-figure mark, its chief operating officer has revealed. Mr Keith Hague said London’s Cleveland Clinic, due to open in two-and-a-half years’ time with an initial 200 beds (29 ITU), had sparked interest from ‘thousands’. His remarks came in response to a challenge from a representative of the Independent Doctors Feder ation (IDF), whose members have voiced opposition in recent months to a private salaried service model. IDF president-elect Dr Neil Haughton, chairman of the group’s GP Committee, warned him that private doctors liked being self-employed, adding: ‘I wonder where you are going to get all the doctors from?’ Mr Hague replied that as well as consultants, there was interest from young doctors and from physicians overseas. He expected around 50 employed doctor staff would be in place during the initial stages, working alongside more than 300 ‘credentialed’ staff, and they would be on a one-year rolling contract after five years. The credentialed staff were needed because it would be imposIn association with
sible to start with a fully employed model. He told LaingBuisson’s Private Acute Healthcare Conference that the $1bn+ hospital project at 33 Grosvenor Place, Belgravia, currently under construction, marked ‘a big cultural change in the UK’. Mr Hague, the former chief executive at HCA’s The Wellington Hospital, said the Cleveland Clinic would have 395,000 square feet available for medical use and would be consultant-led. If it made a profit in the first ten years, then the management would be pleased. The project was about patients, not making money. He said the clinic was trying to build a healthcare campus in the area, involving the use of other buildings, and later it was hoped to build peripheral referral sites. It is planned to have an ‘institute’ consultant leadership structure headed by a president who will be a doctor, not a manager. Under this doctor comes a chief of staff and then there will be eight institutes, each with a chairman, nurse and accountancy support. The institutes are heart and vascular, digestive disease, neurosciences, orthopaedics, surgical subspecialties, general medicine, critical care and anaesthesia, and hospital services. The key consultant leadership is due to be appointed in quarter one of 2018. Mr Hague argued that the salary
model was fulfilling a need among consultants he knew who were saying private practice was not for them due to rising cost issues. He cited problem areas as the level of re-imbursements offered by insurers and defence and secretarial costs. A main outpatient centre will
be five minutes’ walk away, with a third building for 350 office staff nearby. Cleveland Clinic’s main campus in the US, where it owns and runs ten full-service regional hospitals and 18 family health services, has 50 buildings on 166 acres in the centre of Cleveland, Ohio. ➱ continued on page 3
Pictured at an exhibition
The Royal College of Physicians is celebrating women who have made an impact on medicine. Find out how by turning to page 36