In this solo podcast episode, Matt Gallogly addresses burnout and offers concrete strategies to treat and prevent it. He first emphasizes the importance of seeking professional mental‑health support, sharing his own 25‑year experience with therapy as a valuable tool for processing emotions. Gallogly then highlights the need to carve out personal time for recovery, illustrating the problem with a busy pain doctor’s schedule that leaves no room for exercise or rest. The core recommendation is to exit the traditional insurance‑based care model, which often drives overwork. He presents the case of Dr. Demers, an orthopedic surgeon who transitioned to part‑time work, built a small orthobiologics cash practice (offering PRP, adipose, BMAC), and ultimately increased her income while maintaining limited community‑service slots. Gallogly uses this story to demonstrate that a cash‑based practice can provide financial freedom, flexibility, and a sustainable path away from burnout. The episode concludes with standard podcast calls‑to‑action.
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So what's the cure with— for burnout? Let's talk about the cures for burnout. Well, there are traditional cures, right? I clearly would suggest that if you're feeling burnt out, don't be afraid to go on and get some therapy. Go talk to a therapist. I mean, it's not a weakness. Look, I've done therapy off and on for 25 years. It's probably one of the best things, you know, to be able to, you know, talk about How I'm feeling and sort out how I'm feeling and sort out all these things have been very, very valuable. Now I just do podcasts, but that's another topic for another day. But the point again, here's what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is go. You know, there are a lot of things that are out there. If you're dealing with some mental health issues, clearly get some help. Okay? But there's other things that you can do as well to help prevent that. One is create time for yourself. Okay? Now this is hard because. Like, I'll take the example of one of my pain doctors in Scottsdale, Arizona. He gets into the office at 6:45 in the morning. He starts seeing patients at 7:15. He sees patients till 5 or 6 o'clock at night. He stays until about 7, kind of updating charts, goes home, has dinner, and then from 8 o'clock until about 10:30, 11 o'clock, he sits at the kitchen table while his wife is on the couch watching TV and finishes charting, right? So he has no time. I asked him, when was the last time you've worked out? He goes, I can't remember the last time I've worked out. And so what happens is that you're unable to get that reset, that recovery. Okay. But I'm going to talk to you about something that's even better. And that is get out of the system, get out of insurance-based care. Now, I know there's a lot of questions that go with that, but let me tell you the story of Dr. Demers, and you can listen to her story. We have videos and we have recordings on it. She and I host the Business of Orthobiologics event a couple of times a year. There'll be information coming out on that. Here's her story. This is a woman who is a successful orthopedic surgeon, and she fellowed at Tauss. She's highly skilled. She's married to an OB-GYN. They're in a small Northern California town. Basically everything that you would think would be great, right? Except for after that she had her daughter, she did not want to go to work anymore. Not just like, I don't want to go to work. Like she would beg her husband, Dr. Matt, To, please don't make me go to work today. Please don't make me go to work today. And what she did was in the middle of her shift, in the middle of a busy 30-patient, 35-patient day in her orthopedic surgery practice, she walked out. She went to lunch and she didn't come back. And what she did was, I'll make this long story very, very short. She made a deal where she just started working part-time. And the funny thing was, is her income really didn't go down at all. The hospital barely noticed. In fact, she even said nobody from the hospital even called to check on her. This was all just figured out with her staff. And she took that time to go for runs and to figure out what her next step was. And what she did was she started offering orthobiologics, things like PRP, Adipose, BMAC, and started very, very small. She started with literally a one-room office. where her waiting room was the reception area of the building. Okay? And what she did is she just started little by little building a business. Today, that business is a thriving cash practice. She still has a little bit of insurance patients that she sees. She likes to serve her community, so she still sees Medicare, Medicaid patients, I think 1.5 to maybe 2 days, maybe I think it's 1.5 days a week, because that's how she serves her community. So she makes enough in her cash practice, more than she's ever made before. And the beauty of it is, is she can still contribute time to her community. And this is just one of many, many, many, many stories. Hope you liked this. If you did, give us a big thumbs up, share this with other friends, rate us, give us 5 stars, subscribe, give us a thumbs up on the video, whatever it is, and come back and listen more. This has been Matt Gallogly. This is the Practice Profit System podcast. And we look forward to talking to you soon. Have a great day, everybody.
