Steven Schwartz (00:01.479)
Hello and welcome to the concierge medical marketing podcast. I’m your host, Steve Schwartz. It’s my pleasure to have you along on our journey today. And today my guest is Dr. Mark Gomez, also known as Dr. G. He has a very established medical concierge practice and physician, and he’s based in the Chicago area. And in preparing for this podcast, I read up on his website.

And Dr. G is a very devout Christian brother. He’s a husband. He’s a father of two children. And it’s truly my pleasure to welcome you onto the show today. Dr. G. Thanks for being here.

Dr. Mark Gomez (00:41.644)
thank you, Steven, for inviting me on. I’m so happy to talk about what we’re going to talk about today and what are my passions in concierge medicine.

Steven Schwartz (00:46.909)
Wonderful. Wonderful. Let’s jump right in. Please tell us a little bit about your background. How did you, where did you start? What was it like when you were a kid? The story of when you were in elementary school or middle school and you had a dream. Tell us that story, please.

Dr. Mark Gomez (01:03.322)
So I knew I wanted to be a physician for a long time. I actually knew when I was nine years old and I actually told that story as part of my medical school application many years ago. But I knew ever since the age of nine that I wanted to be a physician. I wanted to help people. And it sounds kind of cliche, but I was incredibly sincere in doing that. And at that time when I knew I wanted to be a physician, I have a twin brother and I remember we were in church on a Sunday morning, just the usual typical Sunday morning.

1987 and at that time my brother and I both had asthma growing up but he had it certainly much worse than I did and my brother goes into this just raging major asthma severe asthma attack during the middle of mass and at that time you know parking lots were in the 80s in churches you know you’re you’re boxed in regardless and the parking lot but I remember at the time you just couldn’t breathe and I remember the Deacon at the time assault was going on

run, stop the mass, tosses my dad the keys to the church pickup truck. He goes, go. And we ran out. Luckily that the nearest ER was not too far down the street. But I remember as we got in the truck and my brother’s just trying to struggle to breathe because he’s my identical twin, it was akin to watching myself suffer. Fortunately, we made it to the ER in time church vehicle in tow because our regular car was boxed

in. But that was just a sign. It was a sign that says, this is my calling. And so that’s what I first wanted to know. My brother’s doing great, and he lives not too far away from me in the North suburbs of Chicago. And he’s a great, great, great guy and healthy. And then I knew when I was in middle school, I kept telling everybody I’m going be a physician, when it got to the point that in my eighth grade, high school graduation yearbook,

In 1992, I wrote that I’m going to be a doctor as far as my future plans and help people need. So fast forward to everything I did my undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis. I did my medical school at Loyola Street School of Medicine in Maywood, Illinois. I stayed on doing my residency in internal medicine at Loyola. And then in 2007, I came out into private practice, traditional primary care with Edward Hospital in Naperville, Illinois.

Dr. Mark Gomez (03:32.601)
and I’ve been there ever since.

Steven Schwartz (03:35.783)
Very nice. And how did you transition into concierge medicine? When did that start?

Dr. Mark Gomez (03:40.93)
Here’s so.

So the thoughts about transition of concierge medicine happened probably about in 2018, almost 2019. And the interesting thing is that I love my health system, really progressive forward thinking health system. And at the time I was in traditional primary care, I had probably almost 2000 patients at that time. And our health system always had a small arm of concierge medicine. was probably unthinkable at the time when it started, but it was in 2005.

when our health system had two physicians out of the employed group of physicians do concierge and at that time in 2018 one of the physicians announces retirement or announces plans to retire and so after that time there was an informational and I heard a little bit about concierge medicine but not too much but I’d see the docs at some meetings the two docs that had been in it since 2005 and there was an informational and there was maybe

about 12 or so physicians that came out to the informational dinner. And I think that the health system did a little bit of research ahead of time to see whose practice may be able to support going into concierge medicine and obviously not leaving people hanging. And so went to the dinner, I left the meeting and I called my wife up and I said, my wife Tiffany, said, babe, I think this is my sign, my next cause, my next phase. And after that, little bit later,

We basically was able to give I got the green light to go into concierge and made the transition from traditional primary care in basically fall early fall of 2020 and then into concierge medicine I did my transition quite fast. It was a one -month transition Which is almost unheard of most stocks will probably transition of the course of four to six months But I transitioned in roughly 28 days to go for my traditional primary care practice to

Dr. Mark Gomez (05:41.52)
concierge medicine and that was as of late October 2020. So I’m getting close to my fourth year in concierge.

Steven Schwartz (05:49.693)
And the fact that you were doing that right in the midst of the pandemic must have been a whole extra interesting challenge.

Dr. Mark Gomez (05:58.03)
You know, one of the things that came to me is we had to do interactive Zoom. So to try to convert as many people as I could out of my practice into a new practice, we, was doing several Zooms a week in that month of early October of 2020 to transition by the end of the month between Zooms, mailers, mean, phone calls. But I had this, I knew I was going to be transitioning. I just didn’t know when. So what I actually did was I actually made up an Excel spreadsheet.

And I had about I took my entire patient roster and I had about 900 names This is this is work that took months and months and months of weekends hours and weekends I don’t even know how I did this even all these years a couple years later, but I had about 900 names And I basically kind of called it a wish list of patients to say if I ever do make that transition These are the people that I would like to target. I was shooting for a number of about 400 patients or so

And going into there, now I did take over the practice of a physician that had retired. And so I was able to not only convert a substantial portion of my patients, about 250 of patients or so of my practice that followed me. And then I had about 200 patients that I inherited from the previous physician.

Steven Schwartz (07:19.306)
So really things just came together from the one physician retiring, the informational dinner. You just felt called that this was what you should be doing the next season of your life and put in a lot of work and pulled it together. That’s amazing.

Dr. Mark Gomez (07:36.878)
You don’t see when I think about life, life is a series of transitions, but to hopefully make something transformative. And I think that’s really powerful. And what I get to do, enjoy what I do. And I can admit that I was burnt out. A lot of physicians feel burnt out. Also, when I started my practice in 2007, it was just me. was single, no family, just having to meet a young lady

who ended up becoming my wife later on, but my priorities in life were different. And then I became a dad. And then when I became a dad the second time, my priorities really got different and said, you know, I want to be able to be a father first. I’ve always loved myself as a father first, a husband second, and a physician third. And I wanted to stay true to my values in that. And I believe that concierge medicine has allowed me to not only enjoy my family and my broader purpose, but also to

and still the joy of taking care of patients.

Steven Schwartz (08:39.133)
love it. Maybe touch on a little bit more about your work -life balance before Concierge and after. How has life changed for you? Obviously, wife and kids and whatnot, how have things really changed?

Dr. Mark Gomez (08:53.774)
Well, think things have changed for the better. I’m still busy. There’s no doubt about that, but it’s more of a manageable busy. And even though I was doing a lot of stuff outside of my medical practice when I was in traditional primary care, I served on various committees at the hospital, assumed several leadership positions within our physician governance. But I always want to be part of something, some sort of change because you never want to turn down the opportunity to create larger scales of change. And that’s one of my

core beliefs. And so, yes, I was involved in things while running a busy practice and being a busy dad and a busy husband. At that same time, my wife and I began podcasting. So there was a lot going on while I was still in the traditional primary care model. When I transitioned, I was able to just manage things better. I also had some more time to take care of myself. You know, I joke around with some of my colleagues and I say, one of the first things I did was I think I lost about 10 pounds.

pounds with intent after I started in concierge medicine. But so I think I definitely have more work -life balance. But we’re still busy. We still want to make sure we’re there for people at the end of the day. still about patient care.

Steven Schwartz (10:08.125)
Absolutely. I love what you’re sharing with us. Well, let’s talk a little bit about actually growing a concierge practice, obviously part of a big health system. Can you explain kind of the overview of your team as far as yourself, nurses, staff, front desk support? What does your team look like, your core group?

Dr. Mark Gomez (10:35.214)
So our team is really, we have a fantastic group of people that are aligned in what we do for concierge medicine. I do have a physician partner and he’s been incredible in being my mentor in this model and he’s been in concierge since 2005. And so he’s really been through everything to see the ups and downs, what happened during the downturn of the recession and also just the recovery.

So he’s been really much of a sounding board for me, just helping me along the way as I grow into my own person. But we have a great team. So I have a physician partner. I also have my own nurse. My partner has his nurse too. I have my own medical assistant. My partner has his medical assistant. And then we have several support staff. have two amazing individuals at our front desk that are patient service representatives.

And then we also have a nurse that is our practice operations manager. And so we are within the, in an overall employed health system that actually has nine total physicians that do concierge medicine out of a broader system. And the broader system, at least in primary care, is over 700 employed primary care clinicians. That includes obviously nurse practitioners, but we are just a small arm.

And the health system, that is incredibly large.

Steven Schwartz (12:08.477)
Right. So it’s almost like your team of, of what you said, nine concierge docs within the bigger system of approximately 700 physicians and PAs. Correct.

Dr. Mark Gomez (12:18.03)
Yeah, 700 and that’s in primary care alone. If we think about the bigger system, there may be close to 2000 total employed physicians and APPs when it comes to specialty care as well, too. But primary care is certainly the foundation of any health care. I’m a primary care care physician to the core, and I always rally for primary care initiatives in this practice. What I love about this is what Contier’s medicine, you know, what I really love about it is that, you know, our practice example

finds convenient and personalized health care. And then I think with our program, we can focus on smaller patient volumes and focus on each individual’s health care needs.

Steven Schwartz (12:59.107)
it. I was speaking with a colleague of mine at the Chamber of Commerce recently and we were talking a little bit about concierge medicine and her face lit up. She got so excited. Her name’s Mary and Mary’s very sweet. She’s worked at a bank for, for many, many years and she was having some health issues and every year, I guess she would go to get her physical with her traditional primary care physician and he would tell her

yeah, you have high blood pressure. Take these pills. See in a year. And she’d be frustrated about that. Came back next year and she still had high blood pressure and trying to figure out what’s going on. And he says, you just have high blood pressure. Take these pills. You’re doing fine. And she was frustrated because she felt there must be more to it. And she found a concierge medical practitioner and went there and that provider sat down with her and really dug into it. And they found some other issue.

because they took the time to talk, to listen, to do tests and really dig in. And they found what the issue was, got her the care she needed. And she said, I fired my doctor and I fired a couple other people and I’m working with my concierge doctor now. And that person handles it all and arranges and everything. And she is so much more healthy and so much more happy and satisfied. So I’m going to have her on the podcast soon to let her tell her story herself, but it was just.

so awesome seeing the power of that story when a concierge physician truly has the time to slow down and speak with their patient and really take the time to dig into it. Have you seen stories like that in your own practice?

Dr. Mark Gomez (14:41.262)
I absolutely have. And I loved everything. I loved a lot of my career in traditional private care. I loved it. It was a foundation. I did it for 13 years in this last four concierges. I loved everything of the people that I worked with. And I believe that, you know, our patients certainly do appreciate longer appointments, time to discuss concerns. And that was something that I’ve seen all over during this time in concierge medicine. The beauty of that, our patients have access to me 24

all my patients have my cell phone number if they want it. Most of them don’t call me on myself or even text me because we know that if they do call during working hours that somebody will answer the phone right away on that first ring and it’s a real person. But patients absolutely love the convenience of that. You know and our and me as a physician we get to take the time. As a matter of fact, see my physicals are maybe they’re about 60 minutes on the front and I do my physicals in two parts.

a part one and a part two. So part one is just about getting data and that’s about 60 minutes. We draw blood. We actually have a unique partnership in our practice with Cleveland Clinic in our particular practice. If patients want to use Cleveland Clinic, they can also use our hospital laboratory if they want to, but we have a unique partnership. But we do a series of different tests. We do things like dynamometer, grip strength assessment, which is critical for overall well -being.

We do smart balance scales. We have body composition analysis. We do audiometry. We do peripheral vascular screening with ankle brachial indexes. We do EKGs. So we can do a lot of different stuff, grab data, and then two weeks later when I get everything back, they sit down with me for 90 minutes. So all in, they’ve been in there two and a half hours, and you can really, really impart change. And I say in that case that you mentioned for disease management,

Steven Schwartz (16:31.675)
Wonderful.

Dr. Mark Gomez (16:40.786)
This model is great for disease management because for patients that are diagnosed with disease, the concierge medicine approach can certainly help to optimize disease management and control it as problems arise that are identified earlier and adjustments are made to improve their day -to -day health. And I would say for somebody who’s healthy, the model’s even great too for somebody who wants lifestyle wellness. If you’re healthy, our goal is to keep you healthy. If you have some health challenges, our goal is to help you restore health.

Steven Schwartz (17:10.425)
Absolutely love it. Wonderful. Let’s talk a little bit about growing the practice. Is your practice right now in a growth mode? Are you looking for new and additional patients? Are you trying to grow?

Dr. Mark Gomez (17:23.171)
you

So thanks, thank you on that question. We are in a growth mode right now. We are actively open to new patients. Now one of the things I love that we get to do is I get to do what’s called meet and greets. So if somebody’s interested in our model, they can, and they give us a call or a lot of times it’s word of mouth. We get people that refer to our program. And one of the first things I’d love to do is just sit down. They come into my office, we invite them in, pour coffee, pour tea,

Steven Schwartz (17:35.847)
Mm

Dr. Mark Gomez (17:53.824)
We’ve got our nice machines there. We’ve got a little bar in our thing, of course, little snacks, but we just want to get to know them. we sit in my office and we’ll sit there for 30, 45 minutes just to make sure that I can spell out the vision of what I see, but also gives me time to understand where that individual is coming from. As you know, health can be intimidating, and my goal is to make it as straightforward. Take the complexities of health and make it more straightforward to our patients.

Steven Schwartz (17:57.607)
Sure.

Dr. Mark Gomez (18:23.68)
align and they in that individual likes our philosophy to concierge medicine then then we’ll move forward if they think that they want to give some thought there’s no pressure at all the beauty of the model is most of the time Steve we have a wait list and so we have people that want to get into the model and I will say as far as renewals we have over 90 % it’s probably closer to 95 % annual renewal rate on our membership fees so we’ve seen people do see

Steven Schwartz (18:51.591)
wonderful.

Dr. Mark Gomez (18:53.536)
value in this model and we don’t get much turnover at all. But we know things change and people have to make decisions, but we’re here to support them 100 % of the time.

Steven Schwartz (19:03.525)
I love it. What kind of marketing techniques have you implemented? Have you tried what’s worked? What hasn’t worked?

Dr. Mark Gomez (19:11.414)
So right now, when I first started, our marketing was very broad. Well, we did everything from digital marketing to more.

via email. We’ve done marketing via traditional measures like flyers. There was also announcements at the time when I made my transition. But a lot of the times we get patients word of mouth. It’s friends of friends. It’s those personal connections that are incredibly important moving forward. Right now, our marketing is really more just we have our website for our help for a hospital. But we’re not necessarily doing too much marketing now because the system kind of the model kind

cells itself.

Steven Schwartz (19:54.445)
That’s wonderful. I was thinking along the lines of a new physician finishing med school residency. They’re thinking, Hey, I’d really like to do this concierge method instead. And so many things to think about when you’re trying to start a new business. Should I join someone else’s practice? Should I borrow some money and make my own logo and brand of a business marketing? There’s so many different things that

come into play if someone wants to have a concierge model business. Any advice that you would suggest to somebody in that situation?

Dr. Mark Gomez (20:33.4)
Yeah, I would have that person just really understand the market. We do know that that conscious medicine is in a growth phase. There’s no doubt about it. Where it’s at right now on on the economic impact, certainly to health systems, to patient care. We do know that conscious medicine is growth and there is an investment by health systems to have a conscious medicine arm because they see this as an alternative growth model. But it’s another way to personalize that doctor,

patient relationship and at the end of the day it still comes down to patient care and whether they get it their patient care in the concierge model or in traditional primary care that’s up for patients to decide. But I would have that individual understand their market, understand the local market. We know in Chicagoland there is a very big market for concierge medicine and so understand the market first. If somebody’s coming just out of residency I’ll be honest it may be a little bit harder to start something right from the ground up because you

yet to have your name out there. I think every concierge stock that I’ve talked to they’ve been in traditional primary medicine, primary care medicine for a number of years to build their name, to build their brand, to build their recognition and then made the change to transition the concierge at their time of choosing. So number one, know your market. Number two, you’re have to have some real world experience. That’s just how it is. You have to understand where traditional primary care is now to where you might see where con…

contrast medicine is going to go for you in the future.

Steven Schwartz (22:07.917)
of things to ponder and pray about, that’s for sure. I would encourage certainly.

Dr. Mark Gomez (22:11.63)
You know when I did this stuff it was a when I made my transition and I always said I wanted to do it for the righteous reasons and that was to be to be there for my kids. You know as physicians we we sacrifice a lot. I want to be a better father a better husband that’s my number one number two goal is being an amazing physician is my number three and so I wanted to make sure that I aligned with my values first but when I made the transition I prayed and I will tell you this Steven when I was making that transition

the first person that signed up I said, my gosh, this is amazing. You’re like a kid in a candy store. You’re like, all right. And then more and names came through. And then you start seeing the names. like, my gosh, I’m so thankful and grateful. But I think if you have a brand, if you have a name, patients will choose to follow you. They will choose to follow you. And if they try something different and they don’t like it, then they will choose to try to find you. And so I think that’s super important for individuals that are considering kind

as a medicine, but just making sure that you’re doing it for the righteous reasons. It’s got to agree with your values. It’s also got to align with your values in patient care.

Steven Schwartz (23:19.613)
And I love it. I mean, I’d like to see physicians who work so hard to do well in school and to get through med school and residency and all the extra training and all the stress and long nights and all these stories we’ve all heard about to get to a point where they’re okay, you’re a doctor, now you’re seeing patients and it’s all exciting. And then so many people I’ve talked to have burnout because they’re expected to have a panel of two or three or 4 ,000 patients and it’s

It’s exhausting to them. And I love the concierge model where, as you said, you could have, let’s say 400 patients and really take the time with them and slow down a little bit, right? Slow down the conveyor belt arrangement and really take the time to truly give better care. so something you said before about how concierge medicine is truly in a growth mode. Where do you see this industry five years from?

10 years from now.

Dr. Mark Gomez (24:21.976)
Well, I think one of the great things about concierge medicine, at least for me, I’m already looking ahead and I already know that I’m going to have career extension. You one of the things about concierge medicine is it is allowing physicians to practice later into their years where they may have wanted to retire. And so extending physicians, we understand that, yes, there’s a primary care shortfall. And if you take away a primary care physician and transition him or her into concierge who has several thousand patients, what happens to those patients that

Steven Schwartz (24:49.603)
of patients what happens

Dr. Mark Gomez (24:51.902)
can’t transition and I am fully, fully attuned and aware of that reality. On the flip side, we know that physician burnout is real and that physicians can extend their careers and practicing longer to their 70s potentially and maybe even beyond, that can also be a service to help out with patient care, which is really, again, comes with the patient care. So I’m gonna see this, conscious medicine is only gonna continue to grow as people reflect internally on what’s important to them in healthcare.

Patients don’t want more barriers between their doctors. want, patients want timely care, but patients want to do more than just a standard of care. They want to spend more time, the average primary care physician may have less than 15 minutes to be with the person. And when you have a complex medical condition, it’s hard to do that. And so I see patients driving the growth and I see health systems continue to invest in opportunities to have some of their physicians to go

to the model. The last I see physicians that may be in the that somebody be independent and not employed as they look for ways to care for their patients more. I see more physicians that are traditionally independent going into concierge medicine as well.

Steven Schwartz (26:09.245)
I think it makes sense too when there’s a practice, let’s say two physicians and they reach their panel like you, you’ve hit your, many as you can handle and you’ve got your wait list, would it make sense to you that the practice could bring on another physician as a junior physician on the team and start helping them build their panel of 400 patients or so and really just help grow the business that way.

Dr. Mark Gomez (26:37.944)
Well, there’s no doubt that I think, you know, as we think about what our health system wants to do and as us physicians and anonymous are invested in the success of our health system and patient care ultimately making the patient relationship transformative. That is something that those are the questions that we have to think about. We don’t want anybody to not have patient care. So, you know, it’s interesting. I always say if I have a wait list, you know, I’m a little bit frustrated that have a wait list. I’m also grateful that I have a wait list.

But you want those patients to receive care now we obviously when people are on a waitlist, know Obviously you stay with your physician your current care plan and we don’t want you to go without having a primary care physician But but it does behoove us that what are we looking the next steps? Are we able to look at having another physician come in or even maybe entertaining the idea because Models delivered care delivery models change. Maybe there are some practices I know well, I shouldn’t say maybe I know there’s several practices out there in concierge that have

APPs as an extender of the physician care and that’s up to the purview certainly of the practice but we have to be open to ways to make sure that people still have access to great medical care.

Steven Schwartz (27:52.153)
I it. I love it. Thank you so much for sharing with us today in this podcast interview. I’m grateful you’re willing to take your time, your heart, your story and sharing it with our audience. Let me ask you, Dr. G, if someone would like to get in touch with you specifically, maybe they have a specific question or they want to ask you a little more in depth discussion about your, your journey as a concierge physician. How can people get in touch with you?

Dr. Mark Gomez (28:20.62)
Excellent. So the best way to get in touch with the certainly store health system are my health system is called Endeavor Health. I’m at Edward Hospital. There’s different several different hospitals in the larger system, but they can just simply find me. I’m in Naperville, Illinois with Endeavor Health Medical Group. Let’s type that into your browser. I go from there and then they should find me. They can find my name and everything down there. Of course, people can reach me through the

hospitals, social handles, but I’ve got my own social media handles as well too, so I don’t want to reach out. Although that’s more personal stuff, necessarily professional in my capacity as a physician, but simply just give us a call and my email for anybody out there that is interested, it’s mark, -A -R -K dot gomez, G -O -E -Z, at eeehealth dot org.

Steven Schwartz (29:13.585)
Wonderful. Thank you. And you also have recorded many, many podcast interviews yourself with your guests. Would you mind sharing the address of how people can find your podcast?

Dr. Mark Gomez (29:26.198)
Yeah, absolutely. They can just go to my website at drmarcgomez .com. That’s D -R -A -R -K G -O -E -Z dot com. Drmarcgomez .com. And they can find more information about links to podcasts. Yeah.

Steven Schwartz (29:37.693)
Right. Everything’s linked from there. Well, wonderful. Dr. G, thank you so much for your time. It’s been truly a pleasure. Thank you. God bless. And I just appreciate you so much.

Dr. Mark Gomez (29:48.686)
God bless. Thank you, Steven. I’ll catch you later. Be well, my friend. Thank you for this opportunity.

Steven Schwartz (29:54.055)
take care of thank you folks for yes, absolutely. And thank you for joining us on the concierge medical marketing podcast. I’m your host, Steve Schwartz signing off for now and we’ll see you on our next episode.