Gastro Health President and Chief Clinical Officer, James Leavitt, MD, FACG, recently sat down with Dr. William Seeds of Authority Magazine to discuss his experience with managing and growing a private practice.
Dr. Leavitt joined a Miami Gastroenterology practice after finishing his GI training in 1980. The practice originally refused to take on the doctor, but the determined Dr. Leavitt wanted to prove himself and convinced them he would bring value they would not regret. He has been with the same practice since, eventually becoming one of the founding groups of Gastro Health.
Dr. Leavitt has seen his GI practice grow from 4 providers to 250 providers over the last 40 years with the expansion of Gastro Health. He discusses the challenges of managing a business and being a provider in the interview stating "I'm a big believer that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I have the luxury of having a great team on both sides of the equation, which helps me manage both roles."
He also discusses with Dr. Seeds the challenges of separating the immediate needs of his patients and the ongoing needs of his business. Dr. Leavitt states "It's one of the biggest challenges I face. Delivering healthcare and the business of healthcare are different in many ways. In healthcare, seeing and caring for patients is immediate and intense, but at the end of the day, I'm done. The business part isn't as immediately intense, but it never goes away; you're always thinking about it."
In concluding the interview, Dr. Leavitt is proud of the growth of Gastro Health and attributes a lot of its success to streamlining technology to give patients first class care. "In 2019, our company saw more than 370,000 patients and conducted 680,000 visits; that is a lot of data. We want to structure that data to be used for predictive analytics, and data mining, so we can care for our patients in ways that we never thought possible. We need to look at future technologies and innovations that are going to be disruptive, adapt them into our workflows, and then use them to our fullest advantage."
To read Dr. Leavitt's entire interview in detail, please click here
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