Vacation time

Hey Hey hey! its summer time! Time for pools, boats, hammocks and vacation! You should definitely take a vacation, everyone needs a break. And those of us with kids, we kinda have to take them during summertime, when the kids are off. Plus there are lots of fun things to do in the summer, beach, boats, cruises, Disney, all that fun stuff.

I have always like the long weekend every 90 days, and the week off once or twice a year. The long weekends are great to recharge your batteries. If you are new in practice, don’t have associate, etc, you should probably only be taking the long weekends every 90 days. Just take off a friday, or a thursday and friday, every 90 days, recharge. Once you are more established, you should be taking a week off, at least once a year, maybe twice!

What do you do taking your week vacation? A lot of docs will shut down the practice for a week. I highly do not recommend doing that! They say one week closed in the practice will take you 12 weeks to recover from. So, that is 3 months! That is just to get back to where you were, not grow. If you are trying to grow your practice into a million dollar practice, a three month set back is pretty huge. That is a quarter of the year!

Don’t do it!

So, what to do? Well, like i said earlier, if you are newer in practice, take long weekends, not weeks off. Take off just a friday. Between the long weekends, and holidays, you can push through that for a few years, trust me, i did it!

If you want to take the week, but don’t have associate coverage, hire a locum tenens. Cover doc. You should be able to make money on the time off, but even if you break even, or loose a little, it is worth it. You wont loose that week, which will cost you 3 months, you will capture any emergencies, and your patients will know you are there for them. I remember first doing this, i would not take a salary for the week, and pay this doc, then pay for vacation. I was loosing out big time in the beginning. But you know what, some of those emergency patients are still at the clinic. It pays off in the long run.

So, plan your vacation time a year out. Plan your long weekends, and weeks off. If you don’t plan, something will come up. The office can plan around your schedule.

Get a coverage doctor if you don’t have associate coverage. And enjoy the beach!!