How to be a medical entrepreneurial attending

My first career was as an academic surgeon. As such, I served as a surgical attending physician overseeing the care of patients at an academic medical center. Now virtual attendings are here to stay. So is their helper, AI.

After a few career transitions, I am now an entrepreneurial attending i.e. instead of teaching students and residents how to take care of patients and do surgery, I teach students and others how to take care of their latest ideas, initiatives or companies and oversee their activities until they have the competencies to get them to patients independently.

The role of the entrepreneurial attending is new, and the need derives from more medical professional schools offering courses. experiences and programs in biomedical innovation and entrepreneurship.

However, medical entrepreneurial attending professional development still lags resulting in a small entrepreneurial attending pipeline.

As more doctors choose to be employed rather than be in independent practice , and , as intrapreneurs, employees?acting with an entrepreneurial mindset, ?becomes more of a competitive advantage if not requirement, we need to change how we teach all present and future employed physician intrapreneurs, not just those at academic centers, how to create user defined value through the deployment of biomedical and clinical innovation using a VAST business model in their organizations.?

Here is why you should hire physician intrapreneurs and what to do with them once you have.

The present model, integrating entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial models, like accelerators, generators, venture studios, innovation centers and incubators, to include doctors into the ecosystem is slow, cumbersome, inconvenient, not familiar to most doctors, and does not conform to their workflow and schedule demands. Neither does it provide enough of an incentive to participate, given the opportunity costs that must be incurred to participate in intrapreneurial activities compared to reliable, revenue generating clinical or research activities.

Sick care innovation centers have had variable success.

Most MD/MBA programs should be terminated.

Instead, we need to develop a cadre of PIIRs, Physician Intrapreneurs in Residence, which can act like?teachers, mentors and sponsors ?to those who choose to go down the intrapreneurial path. You might consider them intrapreneurial attendings offering PIIR to peer support and guidance.

Here are some reasons why it makes sense to work with entrepreneurs-in-residence. ?Given the small, but growing, number of physician entrepreneurs, most EIRs will be domain experts. Eventually, EIRs will be replaced with PIIRs.

Entrepreneurial attendings are much more than just teachers. Unfortunately, academic medical centers don't recognize that and don't give promotion and tenure credit for anything other than teaching, which is the least significant role of an entrepreneurial attending. Doing so is another feature of entrepreneurial academic medical centers.

Here are the competencies required to be a medical entrepreneurial attending :

1 An entrepreneurial mindset supplementing the clinical one

2. Different and bigger networks

3. Business judgement learned from business failures

4. Street cred

5. Organizational and regional innovation ecosystem integration

6. Organizational support, resources and alignment

7. Access to sponsors and funding sources

8. Motivation

9. Credit for building a dossier

10. Incentives

11. Connections to help students find non-clinical jobs and engagements

12. Personal branding abilities

Entrepreneurship should be integrated into existing preclinical and clinical curriculums and rotations not created as a separate course. Ways to integrate include Grand Rounds, M and M conference , innovation rounds, innovation rotations and internships.

Philantropreneurs will endow chairs, lectureships, centers, and Institutes for Biomedical Innovation. Departments of interprofessional biomedical innovation are not far away nor are virtual entrepreneurial attendings.

What got you from being a clinical attending will only partially get you to being an entrepreneurial attending. Identify the gaps and execute your personal and professional development plan to fill them.

Entrepreneurial medical professional schools need entrepreneurial attendings with the right mindset, motives, means and strategy maps to succeed.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack