The benefits of working with a consultant when starting a private urology practice

In this video, Amy M. Pearlman, MD, interviews Gia Ching of GCC Consulting regarding the benefits of a consultant for health care professionals. Pearlman is a urologist and co-founder of the Prime Institute in Coral Gables, Florida.

Transcription:

Pearlman: Are there any last messages that you want to give to people viewing who maybe are still in training, trying to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives, or once they're done with training for people who are early, mid, late career, who are thinking, what am I going to do in this next portion of my life and my career?

Ching: I think that wherever you are in your career, there are always benefits to working with a consultant. I think that, wherever your timeline may be, it never really hurts to have a discovery call with a consultant to just see and get some ideas and just give you some possibilities. It doesn't have to be done today or tomorrow, but it's always nice to know what your trajectory looks like for the next 3, 5, 10 years, and working with someone like that, at least they can give you the guidance and help you avoid a lot of the common things that we've seen when providers are looking at potentially building a private practice. I think that everyone's path is different, and the time to get there is obviously different for so many providers, but I think that one thing I can definitely attest to is that once the clients take the plunge and either do their own thing or join someone, they're always so much happier when they are in their own practice, whatever the model may be. So I think that if you feel ready to do it, fresh out of fellowship, or fresh out of residency, or maybe you're just getting burned out and you want to do your own thing, I think it's always nice to have all your ducks in a row, like Amy said, and at least get someone who can give you that perspective on, "This is what your strong suit is. This is what you love to do. These are your passions. This is what I would recommend you create a practice focusing on." And just having someone with another set of eyes I think is always helpful and gives you a lot of inspiration as well as a lot of encouragement on exactly what you need to do next.

Pearlman: Gia, where can people find you?

Ching: You can find this online, Instagram or social media, as well as our website, gccconsultinggroup.com, and you know also you can contact Amy and she can refer.

Pearlman: Awesome. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. I just want to emphasize, everything that I've worked on with my sister and with Gia over the past few years additionally, starting with our starting with our educational site and then our own practice, we were never taught in training, and I don't know that we're ever going to be taught it in training. So oftentimes, we need to go outside of our medical circles and reach out to people who can really provide us real-time guidance and set those timelines. And I'm not saying that everyone should leave their current practices and start their own practice. I'm just saying, we talk about burnout all the time, and we talk about the issues that are involved in big health care systems and with insurance, and so for people who are just curious, who just want to think about some potential other opportunities, I think a really good first place to start is discussing with a consultant who's done this before.

Ching: And I think for your practice, there are so many new things. It's not just building it. Now we're at phase 2, where we're adding on new services, we're adding on different things to the practice. It's almost like it never stops growing. It never stops evolving. That's the fun part as well. Dr Amy, you're 3 years in, but the sky's the limit. There are a lot of exciting things coming out for Prime in 2025 so I think, like I said, there's never really a right or wrong time to bring on a consultant. I think it's just a matter of wherever you are with your journey, wherever you are with your practice, it never hurts to have someone come in and just look at what's under the hood, give some professional advice on some growth strategies, or some operational streamlining strategies that can ultimately benefit you and grow your practice.

This transcription was AI generated and edited by human editors for clarity.