Listen to the podcast here: How to Plan for Summertime Growth
Episode Summary: In this episode of DPC Pediatricians, Phil and Marina discuss how DPC practices can use the slower summer season as an opportunity for growth and innovation. Phil shares his idea for an ADHD “tune-up” program focused on improving sleep, nutrition, exercise, routines, and school readiness before the academic year begins. They explain how DPC physicians have the flexibility to create specialized programs and provide more personalized care than traditional practices. The episode also focuses on physician sustainability and creativity within the DPC model. Marina describes a potential summer mental health program for parents and children centered on emotional wellness and family involvement. Throughout the conversation, Phil and Marina encourage physicians to use slower seasons to recharge, explore new interests, strengthen patient relationships, and build a more sustainable and fulfilling practice.
Welcome to another episode of DPC Pediatricians today we’re talking about summertime now it is almost summertime and I alluded to this a little bit on the last episode but I think it’s important for us in DPC to be proactive when it comes to summers.
In a traditional practice your summer is your busiest time of year because everybody needs their summer physicals and summer physicals and summer physicals and in DPC while that is true that the we do have our summer physicals to get through to panel sizes are so much smaller that oftentimes summer is a slower time period when it comes to visits in the office dpcpediatricians.com illnesses or things along those lines now one thing i shared on the last episode was my idea that I’ve been building out of tune-ups you can do a tune-up for anything but for me I’ve been doing a lot more ADHD in the past year work with with
a lot of families on adhd and outside of simply in my previous life as fee for service it was refill refill refill see in three months refill refill refill see in three months i’ve gotten more in touch or woke about all the different adhd options and things that we can do out there. And so things like sleep,
exercise, nutrition, parenting approaches, school approaches, kind of trying to do a lot of different building blocks to try and help children with ADHD to thrive. And my thought was, well, there’s a lot of kids without ADHD out there. And school year is like being at the Olympics,
like every day is bobsledding and synchronized swimming and like all the big demands on them to perform or then and when do we get better? Well, Olympic athletes do all of their improvements to get to the gold medal in the off season when the stakes aren’t as high,
when they are just showing up to practice and putting in the hours at whatever their sport might be. And how can I take that and apply that to kids? Well, kids with ADHD in the summer, let’s get some habits in place. Let’s figure out our sleep.
so that when we get into the school year, we can have a better sleep plan. Let’s figure out some parenting approaches for afterschool or evenings or mornings that are helpful. Let’s get their nutrition dialed in. Maybe let’s check some labs and make sure that there aren’t nutritional things that are impacting their success,
whether they’re on medications or not, and create an opportunity for people to say, hey, this isn’t something that all pediatricians offer. If your doctor can do it, great. Go see your regular doctor. But if not… we can take care of this and we can help you to put a plan in place so that as the
school year starts things go more smoothly it’s a revenue opportunity for us it’s me getting to practice what I really enjoy taking care of which is kids with ADHD and helping them and their families to thrive and some of them will say yeah this has been great we’d like to keep seeing you as
our primary care doctor or just for ongoing ADHD management whatever it might be so that’s kind of one thing that I’m working on the physician assistants in our office really likes anxiety so we’re going to do the same thing in her realm for anxiety
and what are the things that we can make sure we’re putting in place to help a child that’s anxious and I think one of the benefits to this like no one’s getting their kid checked for ADHD in the summer like they made it through the school year it was what it was
let’s see how it goes in october and then we’ll decide but there are a lot of kids that are out there diagnosed and it’s an opportunity to take them and say how can we help them to thrive more so that’s been one of the things that we’ve been
putting together in our practice to continue to grow despite it being not as busy
yeah that’s really cool i like that and i love that this shows how it’s a beautiful demonstration of how as dpc physicians we can continue learning and growing so especially because we have more time and we start to explore the deeper levels of illness and different conditions and so even though you were a very capable
practitioner with ADHD kids like your dpc practice has enabled you to learn even more about it and to develop this really unique approach that you can use to attract more families during the summer i love that because a lot of practices do kind of look at the summer as like oh
this is just inevitably the slow time of year there’s nothing i can do about it Although in some ways, some of us accept it. I think I’m going to be more accepting of it this year because I also need a bit of a break and just step back and recover. But for other practices, especially in the beginning,
it can feel like, oh my gosh, how am I going to make it through these really slow months? So I love that idea. My idea, and I don’t know if I’m going to go forward with it this summer, but perhaps I will if I
i’m able to make the pieces work without too too much effort on my part is the truth but i’ve had this dream since actually about two years ago having this mental health summer camp for parents and their kids now we know as pediatricians that when it comes to mental health behavioral health issues
you can’t just treat the child you can’t just treat the parent there is a dynamic at play that is feeding into it in one way or another right and so having the parents and the children come together maybe just one parent whatever works for the family right but having it on a Saturday for maybe
like six weeks in a row throughout the summer and addressing different topics so maybe like one week on the connection between the mind and body another week on music therapy another week on breath work another week on other topics right so I
think that would be something really fun and it would just be about two hours on a Saturday every week for about six weeks I think it would help parents to see their children in a new way and themselves in a new way and also children to help make connections between these things that maybe their parent
never learned about and hasn’t been able to teach them but they learn together and they grow together and they take home practices and new knowledge and skills that they can enact together so that’s an idea may or may not happen this year we’ll see
I love it. Now this would be a group, right? Yeah, it would be a group. I love that. Do you have the space for like a group thing in your new clinic space?
I do. And actually we have a beautiful backyard that we landscaped with a water feature and a grassy area. that would be amazing for it we also have an indoor space the lobby that is big enough for maybe a group of like 20 ish 20 to 25 so yeah we do and I that was one
of the things that excited me and why I chose this space that we moved into because it has the capacity to do group activities like that I love that I think that’s
such a great idea and I think to your earlier point before you shared that is that it’s okay in the summer to just coast a little bit right because the demands on your time from your patients are going to be less and i would encourage most people
to say well i’m going to block out half a day i’m going to disappear for a day a week or something along those lines and then see how that works because i think you’ll be surprised and i’m always surprised when i like take time off and the walls don’t fall down
that I was able to step out and be away and recharge or spend time with my family and things kept going. And I think that even if you’re solo doing it all on your own, what you could do is you could block time and just not have that available on your schedule.
and let people fill in the gaps and experiment and see what happens if you go to the zoo or something along those lines. Hey, I’m out of the office. I’ll be back this afternoon at three. If there’s any things that need to be seen, I can see them, but we’re going to the zoo right now.
I think families will dpcpediatricians.com tuesday wednesday friday so that you can get all of your your needs met and don’t forget to book your summer physical click this link to book sort of thing but then giving yourself that time and seeing how the rest of your week goes when you’ve
given yourself back that time in fact yeah that reminds me of one of the hesitancies that i have about this mental health summer camp is like i have one or two trips planned during the summer and i’m like well what if i’m not there that week but The more I get accustomed to being a practice owner,
the more I realize that I can’t make myself the bottleneck in everything that I do. That’s not a really sustainable way of setting up a practice. Obviously, certain things, it’s going to be harder than others. But with this mental health summer camp, there are absolutely people that I can call upon.
to say, hey, you’re an expert in this area. You come lead this week while I’m gone that Saturday and I’ll lead four of the six, but then maybe I’ll have two guests come in and lead the other one. So yeah, this is something that’s progress on my part as a human being is like realizing, wait a minute,
I don’t have to be the bottleneck in everything that I do. I can rely on others for support just like I can provide support.
Oh, that’s such a good lesson because I feel like my middle name is often bottleneck and like I have all these ideas and then they all get stuck at the bottleneck because I’m trying to control too many aspects of them. And if I would just let other people be in charge, then things would get done really well.
That came up this week or a couple of weeks ago. So my kids did a musical production for school and there were like, you could buy ads. And I was, and they asked if we would buy an ad to just go in their little program. and I said, sure, we’ll do it.
And then I just forwarded it to my team. They made a beautiful ad in Canva. I jumped in at the last minute, moved a couple of the fonts around, highlighted a word here or there, changed a couple of things, and then we sent it off. And it was perfect. And it was really nice that
it was just a good reminder that like you can get those people on your team that can really help to move things forward or you can rely upon somebody else and you’re really curating the experience rather than having to do all six sessions or whatever it might be yourself you’re creating the opportunity for learning and
growth to happen rather than being the executor of every single thing
yeah absolutely absolutely my office manager is actually out right now for two weeks visiting her family in Puerto Rico and right before she left I was really worried I thought huh she she does all the scheduling for immigration medical exams and she does a lot of the emailing back and forth with certain things and she helps
with the front desk she does a lot so I thought how is that how is my practice going to survive without Erica and uh i’ve been just really pleasantly surprised by how the other members of my team with
me asking them to of course i had to trust them i had to say hey i believe in you i know that you can do this right but my plate has not been added to just very minimally while she’s away because the other members of my team
are lovely and they have picked up the extra work and one of them didn’t know how to schedule appointments on the phone, but she figured it out. She’s very bright, very capable. And a lot of it was me just kind of stepping back and letting them learn.
just take it away and it’s been a pleasantly surprising help now that’s not to say that every person I think if you hire good people and you understand what their strengths and their weaknesses are you know what you can offload to your team so
that you create space during slower times like the summer to give yourself a break if you want that
love it well we would love to hear from you if you have any specific summertime ideas or things that you’re doing in practice you can tag us in the facebook group you can share on our Substack page in the comments what specifically you’re up to
this summer if you have any growth ideas or any questions that come up but thank you all for listening and until next time
