Eight years in the restaurant business before medical school taught Tom Landholt, M.D. some valuable lessons that he now applies to his practice. A focus on excellence in customer service is essential to all businesses, including the practice of medicine, he stresses.
“Every industry is a service industry,” he says. “In medical school, they tried to disabuse me of that notion. I was taught in medical school to focus on making good medical decisions and that someone else would handle the business issues. I was told that wasn’t the task of a physician.”
But making the proper treatment decisions is just one aspect of running the business of a small practice, the physician argues. “It came as a shock to me that some of the best training I got was in the restaurant business, where I got my management training.”
