Doctor to Patient Relationship | A Discussion. Dr. Leyda Bowes is the co-founder of myDoqter, a platform that aims to serve patients by elevating the sanctity of the patient-doctor relationship. myDoqter has a holistic single platform approach that let patients and doctors make the right connections and make knowledge-based, informed choices regarding health. myDoqter has created a novel approach to technology that aims to introduce medical professionalism to the social media space.
In this Q&A blog post interview, you will know Dr. Leyda Bowes’ thoughts on doctor to patient relationship, key considerations on attaining the best doctor to patient relationship, and some tips/strategies based from her experiences.
On Medical Background
1. Please tell us a bit about your personal story, growing up, medical training, medical practice, and current medical professional involvement.
- As for our background, myDoqter was founded by a group of Gen-X physicians. We aim to create a big tent and work with all doctors to create a powerful inter-generational team, but we think our age is significant because we grew up in a time where we saw Medicine not only as a respected profession, but as a lifetime commitment that was a way of life. Our direct predecessors with whom we trained were truly giants. We have since seen the deterioration of the profession in real time and we really see ourselves as the bridge between the old and the new. We are hopeful we can bring the old vision to the new digital age.
2. What made you develop interest in pursuing a platform that values doctor to patient relationship? Motivating factors? Did you pursue any formal education/training that enables you with your entrepreneurial interests? if so, what was it?
- The primary aim of our platform is elevating the sanctity of the doctor to patient relationship because that is the foundation of health and healing. To achieve this, we firmly believe we must have empowered physicians who are autonomous, independent, and free thinkers to serve the best interest of patients and advance the knowledge of Medicine.
- We believe that physicians inherently have the leadership and entrepreneurial skills built into our training to be successful entrepreneurs. We are able to process large bodies of information, diagnose problems, provide solutions, lead life and death emergencies, and manage and motivate large teams that we supervise.
- Moreover, physicians are the only players who have enough knowledge to manage and allocate resources based on the patient’s best interest. Physicians have been small business leaders for generations!
- On the personal sphere, each of the three co-founders of myDoqter has had significant experience with business development directly. We have founded and led practices with up to 50 employees each, and have established strong business and professional networks bi-coastally in the U.S., including the states of New York, California and Florida. Our co-founders have a proven track of leadership in business development, having created once of the largest CoolSculpting Centers in the U.S., and earning recognition as the #1 CoolSculpting Center worldwide for three consecutive years, an award granted by the makers of the brand, the Zeltiq corporation.
Thoughts on Doctor to Patient Relationship
About myDoqter – A Platform that Values Doctor to Patient Relationship
3. What is myDoqter? What is the unique value proposition of myDoqter online platform? Tell us the story behind its creation.
- One of our main goals was to create a platform that would restore professionalism and respect for Medicine in social media. At its core, myDoqter is a “professional social media” network that helps connectivity between patients and physicians. We aim to elevate the social media environment to more professional standards appropriate for our profession and restore respect for our specialized expertise. The components of our platform that we have created to achieve this include the following:
- Robust physician profiles with photos, videos, bios, and key credentials and special skills of each physician.
- Increase respect for physicians as the authorities in Medicine by promoting aggregated medical content on our myDoqter blogs where we feature physicians and their books, publications, social media, and other media appearances to increase their SEO optimization and our collective visibility.
- Create a de novo medical “procial media platform” where doctors can publish live feed of photos, videos, current research, or hot topics to promote specialized expertise.
4. As a platform, what are your key considerations in order to attain the best doctor to patient relationship? How do you help patients find the best physician that can address all their health concerns? How do you help physicians get patients that best fit their specializations? Do you provide any services, courses, coaching, etc?
- On our platform, our primary mission is to restore the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. To do this, we have created a network of physicians with transparent credentials that patients can search. Only physicians that have trained in the full medical school paradigm are in our network, and only supervised physician extenders or mid-level practitioners will be part of our platform, always displaying their connections to the supervising physician. Physicians can also get peer reviews from colleagues and doctors with whom they share in the care of patients.
- This allows patients to know you better and to see what caliber of physician you are based on the objective comments of your peers and, therefore, realize how you may be the right doctor to see for a specific condition. Patients can search for doctors by specialty, keywords, location, symptoms and review what other physicians are saying about a specific doctor they are considering.
- When a patient needs an expert, they need the respected doctor with those skills, not a random person they found on the internet. Additionally, we believe all patients should have a site to go to where they can search for medical doctors and physician-led practices.
- This will optimize the doctor to patient match and relationship. We have designed our platform to be so intuitive and easy to use that physicians can onboard themselves, but we do have a consulting program in the pipeline where we can coach and take care of the whole process for the doctor.
Specifics About Doctor to Patient Relationship
Entrepreneurial Journey – Two Sides of the Coin
5. What are some of the mistakes you made in your journey of building this entrepreneurial startup? If you had to redo the whole journey, what would you do differently?
- One of the biggest problems we as physicians face is analysis paralysis. We overanalyze everything and are afraid to move forward until we achieve perfection. Sometimes that has worked against us as a group and we have lost our grip on our profession. We need to move forward as ONE physician community with confidence and a collaborative spirit to take Medicine back.
- Furthermore, we as physicians should have been involved in creating the technology of our profession from the beginning. We are a little late to the game, but together we can and we will restore physician insight and oversight of digital health.
6. Share some of your career milestones as the owner of a platform that values doctor to patient relationship.
- While there are significant technical milestones that are rewarding to see such as visualizing the solutions in the imagination that then materialized into release of our prototype platform, the truth is that the platform is continually transforming and evolving itself, us, and all of those who are rapidly joining the journey.
- In fact, the most rewarding milestones are related to meeting new physicians and physician groups who are genuinely excited about the mission and have decided to join us for the ride!
Favorites
7. Favorite book that talks about doctor to patient relationship.
- Noah Gordon’s The Physician is a book that narrates the passion of a young European man for the healing art of Medicine and for the care of his patients. As physicians, we can identify with his untiring journey and the many sacrifices that he made to become a doctor.
- Being a financially poor young man in 11th-Century Europe, but born with a gift for healing, he decides to set course for the Middle East where he would train under one of the greatest masters of Medicine, Avicenna. It is a rich and fascinating story. The determination, self-sacrifice and kindness of The Physician are qualities that we as doctors deeply identify with.
8. Your favorite resource for doctor to patient relationship content
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There are many sites with outstanding content. On our site, with the Doqter’s Lounge at Doqter.com we are aggregating a lot of articles and links to great resources.
9. Favorite physician bloggers
- For those who may be interested in reading other bloggers or articles that align with the mission of promoting patient care, elevating the doctor to patient relationship, and fostering physician empowerment, we have found excellent articles on Physician Outlook, Physicians for Patient Protection (PPP), and Practicing Physicians of America (PPA).
10. Favorite quote
- From the Oath of Maimonides: “The eternal providence has appointed me to watch over the life and health of Thy creatures. May the love for my art actuate me at all time; may neither avarice nor miserliness, nor thirst for glory or for a great reputation engage my mind; for the enemies of truth and philanthropy could easily deceive me and make me forgetful of my lofty aim of doing good to Thy children.” What a beautiful sentiment that reminds us of the higher calling of our profession, regardless of one’s personal beliefs.
Final Thoughts on Doctor to Patient Relationship
Tips on Having the Best Doctor to Patient Relationship
11. Many patients often find it tricky to choose a doctor that can address all their health concerns. Please share your thoughts on what patients should consider when choosing their doctors. How do you think they can have the best doctor to patient relationship?
- As the world moves online, it is becoming extremely difficult to make real human connections but in Medicine, the doctor to patient bond as a real human connection is mandatory for proper healing to occur. We believe that patients need to find empowered physicians with the right skills, judgment, and freedom to do what is in the patient’s best interest. On our site, patients can get matched with doctors through a sophisticated search engine to find someone who can best served their needs. It’s interesting to note that the doctor may not always have a “five-star rating”, because we all know that those rating systems are deeply flawed, are so subjective, and often not based on patient care at all! We have re-imagined the whole review process so it empowers the doctor to patient relationship rather than undermining it.
12. What is your opinion on corporate healthcare systems and insurance company’s influence on physician’s workflow and patient care?
- There is a fundamental conflict between the sole aim of maximizing profit and providing compassionate care. It is certainly possible to create value and profit while simultaneously providing care, BUT then it is the physician who is the key player in achieving this balance because their duty is to patients.
- Corporate fiduciary duty is to maximize profits for hospital investors, not care for patients and as such, is not always aligned with the physicians’ obligations and oaths.
- As Medicine becomes more technology-based and moves into the realm of AI, this will become even more true and physicians must have a place at the table in ensuring that these technologies are designed with physician oversight and insight to best serve patients.
Conclusion | Doctor to Patient Relationship
13. This is an open-ended question. Please feel free to share your closing thoughts.
- At myDoqter, we are providing a single-platform solution for all medical practice needs, with important and practical features that have been created by doctors, for doctors and their patients. Certainly, any physician currently in practice can benefit from and use all or a number of these features. Yet, myDoqter has identified a specific and very important need within Medicine, to provide a comprehensive solution for physicians who are coming out of residency or have just begun the journey to establish their own private practice. These physicians often do not have many feasible options to be able to start and/or maintain a private practice. We aim to provide them with all the practice functionalities and solutions they need. This, while remaining committed to physician advocacy, like few or no other service digital platform has done before.
- We welcome all doctors to join us in our mission in any capacity (as users, leaders, or owners of the business of Medicine). Together as a unified group we can take Medicine back and guide it into the future. Thank you for providing us the opportunity to share our vision.
14. For patients and/or doctors who value good doctor to patient relationship – What is the best way for them to get in touch with you?
- Patients can search and find physicians by going to myDoqter.com. For physicians who are interested in working with us in any capacity, please email us at info@myDoqter.com.
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