If you have ever pictured yourself practicing until they take you away in a hearse, this conversation is for you. Andrea Hayes, a retired endocrinologist, spent 30 years in practice and lived through two stays on a ventilator, an office manager who stole a quarter of a million dollars, and COVID, her final straw. Then she stepped away, and she explains why it feels like practicing medicine in a different way.
⏱️ Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:26 Thirty years of stories she never had time to write
1:31 Like many doctors, she expected to leave in a hearse
2:22 On a ventilator with a 10 percent chance of survival
3:54 When her patients learned she got low blood sugars too
4:32 Concierge medicine still could not escape insurance
6:30 She never threw her stethoscope at the wall
7:12 Why her second book is called Peach Cobbler Is Not a Fruit
8:41 Books for anybody who has a body
9:39 You cannot practice like it is 25 years ago
11:08 The office manager who stole a quarter of a million dollars
13:09 Crying between patients while the money disappeared
14:22 Why she stopped trusting anyone else with the business
15:23 Why she tells doctors to skip traditional publishers
16:53 Take home messages
About this episode:
Andrea Hayes developed type 1 diabetes at 15 and went on to practice endocrinology for 30 years. She spent 25 of them in a large independent practice in Nashville and five in concierge medicine in Florida. She describes nearly dying twice, including a bout of sepsis with a 10 percent chance of survival under a doctor who treated her as an adversary. She recounts how an office manager stole a quarter of a million dollars while she was grieving her father. She answered by learning the finances and running the business herself. She explains why concierge medicine never freed her from insurance companies and prior authorizations, and why her exit came gradually rather than in one dramatic moment. Her advice for physicians practicing today is to adapt, keep other avenues open, and stop assuming someone else will handle the money. She also shares what she learned taking two memoirs toward publication after traditional publishers turned her down. She closes with her case that it is never too late to become somebody you never thought you would be.
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