Why not just befriend a derm resident and work for them? All the glory, easier marketing and with none of the practice management trouble.
Not a bad idea. Thanks for the tip, mate. For tax purposes, a partnership is equivalent to a sole proprietorship in this case. We will N E V E R sell out to Bosley® either.
Go to south FL... They have a lot of 1-yr or 0-year (as it was the case in the 80s) post-grad training docs who are doing primary care cash practice. There are also some FM docs who are doing dermatology, but they do take insurance...
Miami is fun for vacation, but I don't know if I could live there long-term. But you would for sure want to live near a major city in this scenario. You will quickly run out of patients otherwise. I'm thinking population >500,000 ...
I will take this somewhat ridiculous question in good faith. There are many potential problems with this plan:
1) In my state at least, you will have to advertise yourself as a general practitioner. Sure, you have a MD, but you will not be able to say that you're whatever kind of physician which may be a bit sketchy. Obviously this will vary by state.
2) You run the very serious risk of significant malpractice liability. Yes, you are legally able in most states to do whatever you want as a physician - after all, you have the credential. However, the reality is that you will either be paying insanely high malpractice to CYA while you do procedures that you do not have any legitimate training in and you will be open to significant medicolegal liability. As a GP, your scope of practice will be extremely limited, and should you have a bad outcome you will be absolutely skewered in court. Good luck with that - I hope you're as good as you say you are.
3) Irrespective of your elite, Rothschild-esque salesman skills, there's a very legitimate question of whether or not any of this is in the patient's best interest. This again will open you up to civil jeopardy as medical boards may revoke your license if you're clearly practicing outside of your scope, doing things that you weren't actually trained for (sorry, going to Turkey and "learning how to do hair transplantation" is not going to fly), and having bad outcomes.
Those are just a few things I can think of off the top of my head.
1. I would love to advertise myself as a GP. I can check A1c and prescribe metformin with the best of them, actually. I will do it and more, in fact. But there is nothing to stop me from going to Turkey and completing a certified training and thereafter advertising myself as a hair restoration specialist or another title of that nature. This is perfectly within our rights.
2. I would get malpractice insurance but would also be reasonably selective in who I choose to operate on. I will study cosmetics deeply if that is the route handed to me, and I will have the utmost medico-legal scrutiny. This is a non-issue. Also, Psychiatry is my strongest suit believe it or not, for what it's worth. But to be brutally honest, you do make a very good argument here in that there is insanely high risk to get skewered in the courtroom -- thus, it occurs to me now that a surgical prelim year might be handy. In the courtroom, being able to say you have completed a US post-graduate surgical training program can't hurt.
3. Indeed, it is a high-risk, high-reward route outside of the scope of the American physician matching algorithm. I know a few things for sure though:
A) This procedure is on the rise and highly profitable.
B) I can learn how to do the procedure very well from the Turks, who INVENTED hair transplantation. How does that sound in the courtroom? Modern hair transplantation was invented by the Turkish dermatologist, Dr. Menahem Hodara in 1897. He was the protégé of Dr. Paul Gerson Unna, who is renowned in Western dermatology. I know expert professors of medical history who will gladly testify if need be.
C) At the end of the day, it is all about the patient. I would N E V E R give my patient a procedure that I would not want for my very own scalp. It will be sterile, comfortable, and ultimately very rewarding for the patient, who will have provided full, informed consent and shopped around beforehand. I reserve the right to deny the patients who I perceive to be poor candidates (body dysmorphic disorder, non-surgically intervenable forms of alopecia, etc.) The results will indeed necessarily speak for themselves. It is not rocket science, and there is no hard reason it can't be done.
Yeah, most people without full residency training avoid procedural-based private practice because they're uninsurable. I foresee that happening here.
As above, it would hold some weight if I completed a 1-year surgical prelim year as an allopathic MD with good academic stats and an utterly clean record. Why in God's name would you need to spend 5 years doing hernia repairs and lap appys to cut a bit of scalp under local anesthetic and do an extremely repetitive procedure that does not resemble 99.9% of what you do in general surgery, plastic surgery, dermatology, or primary care. The only way to learn the art of modern hair restoration is by reading and apprenticeship. I may also be able to find an American mentor willing to pay me a meager stipend to assist him and learn, essentially a private practice fellowship. We are not as beholden to medical institutions as we fear we are. It's hard to swallow that pill for many med students though because the system pushes "professionalism," i.e. conformity to their convenient narrative.
OP is either trolling hard here or being overly anxious, he will likely match into derm and this entire post will be moot.
I hope it's all moot, honestly. I'm just trying to hedge a bit. One must have contingency plans.
