Five Hundred.
Five Hundred—No more.
The most experienced clinician caring for their patients in the best total-risk/value-based environment can excel with a panel of at most 500 patients.
More than that and you will lose the intimate touch with your patients that is at the heart of value generation.
The less experienced will only be able to excel with far fewer.
Some may tell you that you can be effective with far more—administrators trying to leverage your time come to mind.
They are deceived.
They’ve never lived it, in the trenches with their children’s bread on the line like I have.
You may take home more money, but the return on effort drops after a panel size exceeds 500, precipitously after 700. 900? Don’t ask.
And those who boast of a few years of outsized performance with their overly large panels will fall silent once their performance regresses back toward the mean. They’ll be too busy taking care of too many patients for their loss mitigation efforts to have any effect.
So much of medical “innovation” today consists of trying to create a scalable simulacrum of the clinician-patient relationship. Don’t lose yourself in such an attempt.
Be different. Don’t over-reach by trying to scale yourself. And don’t let anyone on the outside try to scale you against your will.
Find your sweet spot and excel.
Need unbiased guidance finding your ideal medical practice, contact me, no obligation just help and value.