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“When a solo physician dies, the situation quickly escalates to an emergency in which family members are trying to sort out what to do with the practice and whom to call to see the patients.”


get billers to work weekends to ensure payment,” she said. Once they’d addressed claims pay-


ment, Dr. Brandl and her husband learned the lease for Dr. Powers’ of- fice didn’t contain a death or disability clause allowing it to be terminated after giving notice. “The only option we had was to get someone else to assume the lease. Dr. Powers’ family was going to owe a lot of money in penalties, and we didn’t want to burden them with that expense,” Dr. Brandl said. Luckily, another El Paso solo physi- cian happened to be looking for office space just in time.


“She assumed the lease and purchased all of the medical equipment and sup- plies in the practice,” Dr. Brandl said. Dr. Brandl says Dr. Powers’ family will


soon receive the profits from the claims she and her husband helped to process after Dr. Powers’ death. The family asked Dr. Brandl to deduct expenses associated with running the practice.


Step in


“When I went to the hospital to see Dr. Powers, I could barely get in. Many, many people had gathered to pray for him. Everyone was devastated. His life was taken too early,” Dr. Brandl said Dr. Powers was an attorney before attending Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) in El Paso at age 40 to pursue his dream of becoming a physician. He completed his residency in 2002 and took a faculty position at TTUHSC. He opened a solo practice in 2009. “Dr. Powers was the ideal physician. He was kind and compassionate and always put patients first. He’d drop ev- erything to help someone in need. We worked right next door to each other for years, and I turned to him a lot for advice and guidance” Dr. Brandl said. For Dr. Brandl, taking care of Dr.


Christine Brandl, MD 52 TEXAS MEDICINE April 2013


Powers’ patient load was the easy part. The hard part, she says, was closing his practice. “It takes months or even years to start a practice. When you close it, you have to move backward through that arduous process. My husband and I closed Dr. Powers’ practice in six months,” she said. The saving grace, Dr. Brandl says, was her husband’s ability to leave his management responsibilities at her prac- tice for six months to tend to Dr. Powers’ practice.


“It was very challenging. The employ- ees were emotionally devastated and had to start looking for new jobs. My husband had to learn Dr. Powers’ EHR and billing systems. He also had to be- come versed in the practice’s policies and procedures,” she said. On top of the administrative learning


curve, Dr. Brandl and her husband dis- covered they had only 90 days to bill for services Dr. Powers had rendered. (See


“Helping Physicians in Times of Need,” page 55.) “Two months after Dr. Powers died, we had to comb through the claims and


Have a plan Last fall, Austin attorney and certified public accountant Michael Stern con- ducted a presentation on pre-death and post-death personal and professional planning for the El Paso County Medi- cal Society, at the request of Executive Director Patsy Slaughter. “After hearing about the impact Dr.


Powers’ death had on his business and on the physicians who stepped in to help run his practice, several of our members voiced concern about being prepared if something unexpectedly happened to them,” Ms. Slaughter said. Mr. Stern says more than 60 county medical society members attended the nearly three-hour presentation. He says about 40 percent of attendees had done personal estate planning, but most didn’t really understand the interrelationship between the personal side and the busi- ness side of planning.


“My message to the physicians was if something happens to you, what would your family be able to do when they walk into your office the next day?” Ms. Slaughter says many physicians who attended Mr. Stern’s presentation


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