The New York Times recently reported the company WeWork’s future is in doubt. WeWork is a coworking real estate firm, allowing diverse groups of professionals to share a workspace with a common receptionist, conference room, etc. When I was in grad school years ago, we called those arrangements executive suites. Supposedly WeWork invented (or perhaps reinvented) office space shared by numerous small businesses. Before Covid my tax accountant rented a two-room office in a building with a shared receptionist, shared waiting room, shared conference room and shared break room. It was an ideal way for a sole proprietor to have many of the amenities of a bigger company office without the bigger company expense.
Coworking spaces go back decades even if the name was changed to give the idea an aura of originality. One thing that is new is the concept is now being tailored for physicians. This is where an old idea gets interesting. Increasingly, physicians are opting to work for hospitals, large practices they don’t have a stake in and other employers whose interests may not align with their patients’. The reason many physicians are becoming employees rather than self-employed is because the financial cost of setting up an office is prohibitive, not to mention the headache of managing a small clinic.
A few days ago I wrote about different types of physician practice arrangements. A day or two before that I wrote about hospitals employing physicians in order to inflate charges and pretend a trip to your doctor was really a trip to a more expensive hospital outpatient clinic. Coworking clinics provide an opportunity for doctors who don’t want to work for an employer who controls their medical license.
Coworking clinical space really makes sense for physicians. Doctors can set their own hours, see their own patients without the financial resources to rent a large office and staff it with billing clerks, receptionists, nurses and so on. The landlord takes care of much of the overhead that private practices usually require. Modern Healthcare wrote about coworking, saying:
Medical coworking is gaining traction among physicians who want to stay independent in a rapidly consolidating industry.
The CEO of Clinicube had this to say about coworking medical offices”
Reception desks, waiting areas, and other rooms can be shared amongst various medical practitioners of a coworking space. Administrative staff such as receptionists or cashiers can be shared as they do similar work in their respective practices. Some workspaces even have automated receptionists, where the patient walks into the waiting room, picks his doctor on an iPad, and a notification is sent to the doctor to indicate that his or her patient is ready.
Indeed, a coworking clinic just opened near my house:
TexasMed is the first medical coworking space in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and can best be described as “WeWork for Doctors”. TexasMed is not just any co-working facility; they specialize in doctors’ offices. Their focus on both function and aesthetics sets them apart from others by providing an environment tailored specifically for healthcare needs. With TexasMed’s flexible model, physicians can choose to work as much or little as they want while having access to all-inclusive on-site amenities. TexasMed has created the perfect solution for medical providers.
The arrangements can be tailored to physicians’ needs but one plan costs doctors as little as $20 an hour if using the facility on weekends, or $2,000 a month for full time usage. Prices vary depending on how many days physicians need an exam room and how many exam rooms are needed. A lot of the basic supplies are included in the rent, such as:
- ED
- Blood Draw Vials
- Blood Pressure Cuffs
- Body Weight Scales
- Cotton Swabs/Gauze
- Eye Charts
- First AID Kits
- Gloves
- IV Supplies
- Masks
- Ophthalmoscopes
- Otoscopes
- Portable EKG Machine
- Portable Ultrasound
- Pulse Oximetry
- Reflex Hammers
- Stethoscopes
- Thermometers
- Tongue Depressors
- Wheelchairs
I hope the idea of coworking physicians sharing clinic space takes off. There are numerous companies that I’ve read about offering different variations of the above scenarios. Doctors can rent one exam room, or they can rent multiple rooms. They can add office space as needed, or take a day off and let another physician pay rent on that room. Physicians looking for novel ways to work independently, enjoy better working conditions while providing better care for their patients should consider renting an exam room in a coworking clinic. Coworking clinics offer an alternative to the high costs of setting up an independent practice or working for hospital employers that dictate how physicians work.