None of my Business S4:E9 -Jenifer Barry, MD

I sat down with Dr. Jenifer Barry recently for the show. Are you doing what you wanted to do when you were 7 years old? Jenifer is. It’s one thing to know what you want to do at such a young age, but it’s another actually go out and do it.

Dr. Barry knew she wanted to be a doctor at a young age and that want, never faltered. She wound up attending The University of Washington for medical school and after graduation, she found her first job in San Diego. After about a year, to be closer to family, she came home to Boise to work as a hospitalist for St. Als.

After three more years, she found herself at a crossroads. Jenifer felt that the work she was doing, didn’t align with the reason she wanted to practice medicine. She wanted to educate her patients about their bodies and help them become healthy. Instead, she found herself medicating them and discharging them.

It’s with this line of thinking, that she went out on her own to open Vitanovu, in order to practice medicine that makes sense to her. We talk about what it was like to leave her job as an employee and start up a Functional Medical practice from scratch.

We discuss what the first year was like and how she decided to not accept insurance. This is a huge decision for a medical practice to make because you can’t really undo it. We talk about the difference in care one is more likely to receive from a practice that does not accept insurance. You may be surprised.

We discuss what her marketing strategy has been like, we talk about staffing and the challenges that come with that. We talk about the risks to running a medical practice and the liability involved.

Lastly, we talk about building a practice with patients that she wants to work with, instead of everyone that walks through the door. This is a challenge because business owners really need to start somewhere. After a while though, entrepreneurs can choose to narrow their field to work with who they WANT to work with. It’s a scary but equally exciting time. Dr. Barry is in the middle of that right now so the conversation is very real.

My thanks to Dr. Barry for coming on and sharing her story with me!