Doctors Are Quitting Medicine to Join Tech Startups

This week, the status of federal health agency websites — along with vital resources that help doctors and patients get through the day — changed seemingly by the hour. And while I wish I knew how this will play out, like most physicians, I’ve been scrambling to keep up with the latest public health news that directly affects our jobs.

It’s been stressful to say the least, and the way I managed to cope was by distracting myself: I devoured as many new research papers, opinion essays, and spicy takes from physicians as I could get my hands on. For example, I loved Dr. Sudeep Bansal’s persuasive breakdown of the current BMI quality measure, and why it’s so broken. (Spoiler alert: Who would have guessed that checking boxes doesn’t fix obesity?) I was also a fan of this op-ed in The Lancet where Dr. Eric Topol and James Zou argue that the way to harness the full potential of AI in medicine is to start seeing models as our “healthcare teammates” instead of just “sophisticated calculators.”

Since I want this to be a space where we celebrate the work of fellow physicians, now it’s your turn: What’s one thing you read recently that’s enlightened you, expanded your worldview, or maybe just kept you distracted? Let’s get a good list going! Reply directly to this email or tag the authors in the comments to lift them up and increase visibility.

Graham Walker, MD, Emergency Physician
Co-founder, Offcall

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Finding Your Calling After Leaving Emergency Medicine with Dr. Kai Romero

This week on How I Doctor, Graham spoke with Dr. Kai Romero, an emergency and palliative care physician, about her career journey: Kai started in the emergency department and then moved to a hospice care facility, where she first worked as a physician and then became chief medical officer. Most recently, she became the head of clinical success at Evidently, an AI platform powered by clinical data.

Kai explains why she left adrenaline-fueled emergency medicine for the compassionate world of palliative care, why the two specialties are more similar than you’d think, and why ER doctors are such strong candidates for jobs outside medicine — even if they don’t realize it. She urges physicians who move into leadership roles to keep practicing clinical medicine and shares thoughts on empathy, physician identity, and the doctor-patient relationship. As @Steve Valdiserri noted: “Such an important point about leadership in healthcare. Supporting doctors in doing what they do best—caring for patients—should always be the priority.”

This is a can’t-miss episode for anyone who’s switched specialties, gone from clinician to administrator, taken a job outside medicine — or is thinking about doing any of it.

Listen to the episode →

Most Talked About On Offcall

If There’s One Essential Money Habit For Physicians, This Is It →

Doctors are often late bloomers when it comes to putting money away. But, in investing, “when” matters more than “what” or “how.”

5 Practical Ways to Reduce Burnout →

Dr. Tina Shah discusses systemic solutions for physician burnout that could actually make a positive impact.

5 Things to Read This Week

‘Their lives are awful’: More doctors are quitting medicine, citing burnout and workplace issues → (The Boston Globe)
One third of doctors say they’re intending to leave medicine. Here are some examples of those who are building alternative careers, ft. @Amy Fogelman, @Karen Leitner, @Jeff Weintraub, and more.

How Doctors Can Best Integrate A.I. Into Medical Care → (NYT)
As more research shows that AI outperforms doctors, it’s important to find a role for AI that doctors trust. @Pranav Rajpurkar and @Eric Topol propose a “division of labor.”

Companies From Google to Salesforce Are Raiding Hospitals for Hires → (Business Insider)
Burned out physicians are reinventing their careers as Chief Medical Officers and in leadership roles at health tech startups, ft. @Guy Maytal, @Lisa Shah, @Joshua Sclar, @Nikole Benders-Hadi, and @Nate Favini.

UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty Is Wrong. Just Plain Wrong. → (MedPage Today)
@Adam Brown argues that all healthcare workers, yes that includes insurance companies, share responsibility for patients feeling dissatisfied with their quality of care.

(Watch) How Do Health Insurance Companies Avoid Accountability → (Glauc Talk)
The Glaucomfleckens tackle hotly debated issues including how insurance companies shift blame for rising healthcare costs onto doctors.

Don’t Forget to Sign Up for Offcall

At Offcall, our goal is simple: to bring more fairness and transparency to medicine. If you’re new here, don’t forget to sign up for our job transparency tool!

Using our private and anonymous salary tool, thousands of physicians are benchmarking their pay and key aspects of their jobs — things like patients seen per shift, total hours worked, supervising NPs and PAs, etc. We’re gearing up for our first major data release across various specialities. If you’re curious how your compensation compares to your peers, and to ensure we have the most accurate data to help bring about pay and workload transparency, we would love for you to join us!

Sign Up (It’s anonymous and takes less than 2 minutes)

Chime in — we’re physician-sourcing

Each week, we’re crowdsourcing answers to a key question and publishing responses the next week to help fellow physicians at work and in life. (We’re getting great answers, and would love to see some new Offcall’ers weigh in!)

Last week, we asked: What’s one important thing happening in your speciality right now that you feel deserves more attention?

Here’s our favorite response: @Eve Cunningham: “For HealthTech - top of mind is how we enable more agentic experiences within the EHR workflow to support clinicians. For women’s health - top of mind is the shortage of obstetrical providers and expanding maternity deserts negatively affecting perinatal outcomes (not something AI will solve any time soon as it will be a while before robots deliver babies…)”

This week, we’re asking: What one thing you’ve read or listened to recently that changed your perspective about a topic in healthcare and that other physicians would benefit from?

Reply directly to this email or add a comment and tag the author. We’ll publish the best responses next week. Have a question you think we should ask next week? Also let us know!

Highlights From Our Community

Each week, we celebrate career milestones, launches, & other goings-on in the physician community. Have something to promote? Reply and we’ll feature you.

🎊Amazing work, Laurie Green
In an interview for Good Medicine by Dr. Rohan Ramakrishna, Dr. Green discusses her storied, public service-minded career and fields questions about being a “changemaker as a practicing physician.” Read it.

✍️Way to go, Santina Wheat
Dr. Wheat dives into a disheartening trend she’s noticed: Doctors disrespecting one another online. What gives? Read it.

📚Mazel mazel, Sarah Gebauer
Dr. Gebauer published a new study that’s “one step forward to making healthcare AI metrics meaningful and understandable to clinicians, health systems, and patients.” Read it.

✍️Congrats, Shilpi Mittal
Dr. Mittal wrote an article in American Hospital and Healthcare Management exploring how the principles of negotiation apply in patient-care decisions. Flip to page 89.

👏You’re crushing it, Ethan Goh
Dr. Goh co-authored a study in Nature showing that AI improved physician performance on patient management tasks. Read it.

🔬Keep thriving, Joanna Kovalski
Dr. Kovalski co-authored a study in Nature Cell Biology with novel findings about how pancreatic cancer growth is fueled. Read it.

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