Age Differences in Medical Practices

Morton J, MD, a 68-year-old cardiologist based in the Midwest, saw things become dramatically worse when his nine-physician practice was taken over by a large health system.

“Everything changed. My partners and I lost a lot of autonomy. We had a say — but not the final say-so in who we hired as medical assistants or receptionists. We had to change how long we spent with patients and justify procedures or tests — not just to the insurance companies, which is an old story, but to our new employer,” said Dr J, who asked to remain anonymous.

Worst of all, “I had to report to a kid — a doctor in his thirties, someone young enough to be my son, someone with a fraction of the clinical training and experience I had but who now got to tell me what to do and how to run my practice.”

The “final straw” for Dr J came when the practice had to change to a new electronic health record (EHR) system. “Learning this new system was like pulling teeth,” he said. His youthful supervisor was “obviously impatient and irritated — his whole attitude and demeanor reflected a sense that he was saddled with a dinosaur.”

After much anguishing and soul-searching, Dr J decided to retire. “I was already close to retirement age, and I thought it would be nice to spend more time with my grandchildren. Feeling so disrespected was simply the catalyst that brought the decision to a head a couple of years sooner than I had planned.”

Getting Through a Delicate Discussion

This unfortunate situation could have been avoided had the younger supervisor shown more sensitivity, says otolaryngologist Mark Wallace, DO.

Wallace is speaking from personal experience. Early in his career, he was a younger physician who was forced to discuss a practice management issue with an older physician.

Wallace was a member of a committee that was responsible for “maximizing the efficiency of good care, while still being aware of cost issues.” When the committee “wanted one of the physicians in the group to change their behavior to improve cost savings, it was my job to discuss that with them.”

Wallace, who today is a locum tenens physician and a medical practice consultant to Physicians Thrive — an advisory group that helps physicians with financial and practice management problems — recalls feeling uncomfortable about broaching the subject to his supervisee. In this case, the older physician was prescribing name brand medications, and the committee that appointed Wallace wanted him to encourage the physician to prescribe a generic medication first and reserve brand prescriptions only for cases in which the generic was ineffective.

He acknowledges that he thought the generic was equivalent to the branded product in safety and efficacy.

“I always felt this to be a delicate discussion, whatever the age of the physician, because I didn’t like the idea of telling a doctor that they have to change how they practice so as to save money. I would never want anyone to feel they’re providing a lower level of care.”

The fact that this was an older physician — in his 60s — compounded his hesitancy. “Older physicians have a lot more experience than what I had in my thirties,” Wallace said. “I could talk to them about studies and outcomes and things like that, but a large part of medicine is the experience you gain over time.

“I presented it simply as a cost issue raised by the committee and asked him to consider experimenting with changing his prescribing behavior, while emphasizing that ultimately, it was his decision,” says Wallace.

The supervisee understood the concern and agreed to the experiment. He ended up prescribing the generic more frequently, although perhaps not as frequently as the committee would have liked.

Respectful, authentic, honest communication is important in any leadership situation but especially in those in which younger physicians are supervising physicians who are old enough to be their parents, says Ted Epperly, MD, a family physician in Boise, Idaho, who is the president and CEO of Family Medicine Residency of Idaho.

Wallace said that older physicians, on coming out of training, felt more respected, were better paid, and didn’t have to continually adjust to new regulations and new complicated insurance requirements. Today’s young physicians coming out of training may not find the practice of medicine as enjoyable as their older counterparts did, but they are accustomed to increasingly complex rules and regulations, so it’s less of an adjustment. But many may not feel they want to work 80 hours per week, as their older counterparts did.

Challenges of Technology

Technology is one of the most central areas where intergenerational differences play out, says Tracy Clarke, chief human resources officer, Kitsap Mental Health Services, a large nonprofit organization in Bremerton, Washington, that employs roughly 500 individuals. “The younger physicians in our practice are really prepared, already engaged in technology, and used to using technology for documentation, and it is already integrated into the way they do business in general and practice,” she said.

Epperly noted that Gen X-ers are typically comfortable with digital technology, although not quite as much as the following generation, the millennials, who have grown up with smartphones and computers quite literally at their fingertips from earliest childhood.

Epperly, now 67, described the experience of having his organization convert to a new EHR system. “Although the younger physicians were not my supervisors, the dynamic that occurred when we were switching to the new system is typical of what might happen in a more formal reporting structure of older ‘supervisee’ and younger supervisor,” he said. In fact, his experience was similar to that of Dr J.

“Some of the millennials were so quick to learn the new system that they forgot to check in with the older ones about how they were doing, or they were frustrated with our slow pace of learning the new technology,” said Epperly. “In fact, I was struggling to master it, and so were many others of my generation, and I felt very dumb, slow, and vulnerable, even though I usually regard myself as a pretty bright guy.”

Epperly encourages younger physicians not to think, “He’s asked me five times how to do this — what’s his problem?” This impatience can be intuited by the older physician, who may take it personally and feel devalued and disrespected.

Joy Engblade, an internal medicine physician and CMO of Northern Inyo Hospital, Bishop, California, said that when her institution was transitioning to a new EHR system this past May, she was worried that the older physicians would have the most difficulty.

Ironically, that turned out not to be the case. In fact, the younger physicians struggled more because the older physicians recognized their limitations and “were willing to do whatever we asked them to do. They watched the tutorials about how to use the new EHR. They went to every class that was offered and did all the practice sessions.” By contrast, many of the younger ones thought, “I know how to work an EHR, I’ve been doing it for years, so how hard could it be?” By the time they needed to actually use it, the instructional resources and tutorials were no longer available.

Epperly’s experience is different. He noted that some older physicians may be embarrassed to acknowledge that they are technologically challenged and may say, “I got it, I understand,” when they are still struggling to master the new technology.

Clarke notes that the leadership in her organization is younger than many of the physicians who report to them. “For the leadership, the biggest challenge is that many older physicians are set in their ways, and they haven’t really seen a reason to change their practice or ways of doing things.” For example, some still prefer paper charting or making voice recordings of patient visits for other people to transcribe.

Clarke has some advice for younger leaders: “Really explore what the pain points are of these older physicians. Beyond their saying, ‘because I’ve always done it this way,’ what really is the advantage of, for example, paper charting when using the EHR is more efficient?”

Daniel DeBehnke, MD, is an emergency medicine physician and vice president and chief physician executive for Premier Inc, where he helps hospitals improve quality, safety, and financial performance. Before joining Premier, he was both a practicing physician and CEO of a health system consisting of more than 1500 physicians.

“Having been on both sides of the spectrum as manager/leader within a physician group, some of whom are senior to me and some of whom are junior, I can tell you that I have never had any issues related to the age gap.” In fact, it is less about age per se and more about “the expertise that you, as a manager, bring to the table in understanding the nuances of the medical practice and for the individual being ‘managed.’ It is about trusting the expertise of the manager.”

Before and After Hourly Caps

Engblade regards “generational” issues to be less about age and birth year and more about the cap on hours worked during residency.

Engblade, who is 45 years old, said she did her internship year with no hourly restrictions. Such restrictions only went into effect during her second year of residency. “This created a paradigm shift in how much people wanted to work and created a consciousness of work-life balance that hadn’t been part of the conversation before,” she said.

When she interviews an older physician, a typical response is, “Of course I’ll be available any time,” whereas younger physicians, who went through residency after hourly restrictions had been established, are more likely to ask how many hours they will be on and how many they’ll be off.

Matt Lambert, MD, an independent emergency medicine physician and CMO of Curation Health, Washington, DC, agreed, noting that differences in the cap on hours during training “can create a bit of an undertow, a tension between younger managers who are better adjusted in terms of work-life balance and older physicians being managed, who have a different work ethic and also might regard their managers as being less trained because they put in fewer hours during training.”

It is also important to be cognizant of differences in style and priorities that each generation brings to the table. Jaciel Keltgen, PhD, assistant professor of business administration, Augustana University, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has heard older physicians say, “We did this the hard way, we sacrificed for our organization, and we expect the same values of younger physicians.” The younger ones tend to say, “We need to use all the tools at our disposal, and medicine doesn’t have to be practiced the way it’s always been.”

Keltgen, whose PhD is in political science and who has studied public administration, said that younger physicians may also question the mores and protocols that older physicians take for granted. For example, when her physician son was beginning his career, he was told by his senior supervisors that although he was “performing beautifully as a physician, he needed to shave more frequently, wear his white coat more often, and introduce himself as ‘Doctor’ rather than by his first name. Although he did wear his white coat more often, he didn’t change how he introduced himself to patients.”

Flexibility and mutual understanding of each generation’s needs, the type, structure, and amount of training they underwent, and the prevailing values will smooth supervisory interactions and optimize outcomes, experts agree.

Every Generation’s Number One Concern

For her dissertation, Keltgen used a large dataset of physicians and sought to draw a predictive model by generation and gender as to what physicians were seeking in order to be satisfied in their careers. One “overwhelming finding” of her research into generational differences in physicians is that “every single generation and gender is there to promote the health of their patients, and providing excellent care is their number one concern. That is the common focus and the foundation that everyone can build on.”

Dr J agreed. “Had I felt like a valued collaborator, I might have made a different decision.” He has begun to consider reentering clinical practice, perhaps as locum tenens or on a part-time basis. “I don’t want to feel that I’ve been driven out of a field that I love. I will see if I can find some type of context where my experience will be valued and learn to bring myself up to speed with technology if necessary. I believe I still have much to offer patients, and I would like to find a context to do so.”

Batya Swift Yasgur MA, LSW, is a freelance writer with a counseling practice in Teaneck, NJ. She is a regular contributor to numerous medical publications, including Medscape and WebMD, and is the author of several consumer-oriented health books as well as Behind the Burqa: Our Lives in Afghanistan and How We Escaped to Freedom (the memoir of two brave Afghan sisters who told her their story).

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