Hanging Up The White Coat

I’m a really driven person and I’ll be the first to admit it.

From an early age, I’ve always thought about becoming a doctor. In fact, I can pinpoint the very moment that it happened.

My dad had the day off from work and took me out of school to hang out with him (something he did from time to time and that I’ve written about previously).

On that day, he had a doctor?s appointment.

As we left the appointment my dad told me that his doctor made a good living, helped others, was his own boss, and even had his own airplane. My dad also told me that I was certainly smart enough to become a doctor and should give it some thought. His opinion was that I would make an excellent doctor.

Something changed in me that day; I was convinced that I would become a doctor.

In my teenage years, I watched my grandfather (who I loved dearly) struggle with health issues. He was poor and healthcare wasn’t something he could afford. My dad helped him qualify for subsidized care in a little community clinic. Looking back, I know it was suboptimal care.

Nevertheless, some health care was better than nothing. By that time, my grandfather had undiagnosed hypertension, diabetes, and sleep apnea. He ultimately died a few days after his 70^th birthday of a massive heart attack.

Something changed in me that day too.

I wanted to help people.

The idea of going into emergency medicine and helping people when they really needed it called to me. The emergency department and the specialists who take call truly are society’s healthcare safety net.

Now I knew that I wouldn’t be paid for every patient that I cared for, but I looked at that as repayment for what that little clinic did for my grandpa.

Seeing all comers has its downside though.

I’ve been cursed at, spit on, threatened and even punched in the face by some pretty unsavory characters. Despite that, the ability to help others in dire need is a real blessing…

Unfortunately, it has become harder to serve that mission. Healthcare technology, treatment capabilities, and options grow every year. At the same time however, the regulatory framework has grown even faster.

Year after year CMS creates a sea of massive regulation that doctors must comply with or face penalties for not doing so. To comply with all of this regulation, administration has swelled to the point that there are now 10 administrators for every one physician.

That’s right TEN!

The electronic medical record debacle is not only dangerous but it steals time from our patients. Have you seen the study in Annals of Internal Medicine that shows we spend twice as much time on non-clinical data entry clerical type of work as we do actually seeing patients?

It is ridiculous and healthcare has become insane.

I can’t exactly pinpoint the moment that it happened; I only know that it has been one thing after the next that has accumulated to create a massively bloated untenable system.

And yet again, something has changed in me.

I couldn’t fathom continuing to practice medicine in a system that had become more about money and cost containment than about quality patient care.

Call it what you will. Fed up. Burned out. Tired. Whatever?

Fortunately, I started investing in and pursuing my other passion – real estate investing – more than 11 years ago.

I started in residential real estate owning several 4-unit properties (quads) as well as a triplex and a single-family home.

Over time, I wanted to get into a bigger game and transition into commercial multifamily real estate.

I took a field partner position with a private real estate investment firm (37^th Parallel Properties). There I honed my skills in acquisitions and brought several profitable properties to their portfolio.

I then started educating others on this asset class through this platform NestEggRx.com.

I knew that there were a lot of doctors who had built their entire financial plan around earned income and their own labor. They hadn’t bothered to build stable streams of passive income outside of medicine and therefore they were stuck in this bloated system without any options.

Providing education to them has been rewarding, but I knew that they also needed access to quality multifamily investments.

I contemplated going out on my own and launching a new venture to help doctors get access to predictable passive commercial multifamily investments but remained reticent.

I knew that I loved acquisitions, education, and helping others, but I wasn’t sure how good I would be with asset management and asset optimization.

Fortunately, having worked with 37^th Parallel Properties for years I really got to see what great looks like. And, I wasn’t sure that I could replicate that model and become a top-tier asset management firm on my own.

Just like I wasn’t willing to provide suboptimal care to my patients, I also wasn’t willing to provide suboptimal investments to my colleagues.

And, something changed again?

I am now officially retired from medicine. I saw my last patient on September 30, 2016.

After 11+ years of working in and investing in apartments I have enough passive income to retire for good. I have a normal sleep schedule. I don’t have to worry about the next batch of regulatory bloat or reimbursement reductions.

I can now focus on my passion – helping physicians and other investors achieve predictable passive investment success with multifamily apartments.

NestEggrx.com isn’t going anywhere. I plan to continue to improve the site and even rollout new comprehensive education around commercial multifamily investing.

In addition, and I’m very excited about this next step, I have joined 37^th Parallel Properties as a Principal to drive investor education across the US. The natural evolution of my efforts is to offer more than education and to actually create access to high quality apartment deal flow.

I have worked with 37^th Parallel Properties as an investor and partner for years. I have met hundreds of their investors and walked every property they own. I love their transparency, their competence, and the level of care they provide to their investors.

I’m proud to join them and I look forward to helping you achieve apartment-investing success.

To Your Wealth!

Dennis Bethel, M.D.

 

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