Clinical Component

Navigating the Clinical Component

Your Daily Practice Rhythm

Your week is designed to be productive but sustainable. You’ll spend four days in clinic, typically seeing 28–32 patients per day, and one OR day. This volume reflects genuine community demand in an underserved market — not corporate-driven overbooking. Appointments fill naturally, often months in advance, with patients who truly need specialty ENT care.

You’ll care for the full age spectrum, including:

  • Pediatric patients with recurrent tonsillitis, chronic ear infections, and adenoid concerns
  • Adult patients with chronic sinusitis, thyroid nodules, salivary gland disorders, and head & neck masses
  • Geriatric patients managing hearing loss and balance disorders

It’s true community ENT — strong bread-and-butter volume with meaningful variety.

Surgical Scope & Setting

One day each week is dedicated to surgery at St. Joseph’s Surgery Center, a modern ambulatory facility designed for efficiency and physician autonomy. The staff understands ENT workflows, and the joint venture structure (physicians + USBI) creates financial upside tied to surgical volume.

Your core surgical mix includes:

  • Tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy
  • Endoscopic sinus surgery
  • Septoplasty and turbinate reduction
  • Routine ear procedures
  • Basic thyroid/parathyroid surgery
  • Benign head & neck mass excisions

Complex endocrine and major oncologic cases are referred appropriately, allowing you to maintain a broad scope without the intensity of tertiary-level surgery.

Real Opportunity for Growth

What makes this role especially compelling is what isn’t currently being done.

Facial Plastics:

Stockton lacks dedicated facial plastic surgeons. If you have interest in rhinoplasty, facial rejuvenation, or reconstruction, there’s room to thoughtfully build that alongside your general ENT foundation.

Otology:

Major ear cases are referred out simply because no one in the group has prioritized them. If you have interest or training in mastoidectomy, stapedectomy, or tympanoplasty, you could immediately build this niche and keep those cases local.

Sleep Surgery:

The group already offers sleep consultations and Inspire hypoglossal nerve stimulation. There’s strong regional demand, and you could further expand this service line.

Head & Neck Oncology:

You’ll manage evaluations and routine procedures, but definitive cancer surgery is referred to tertiary centers. This allows you to maintain continuity of care without the significant time and lifestyle burden of complex flap reconstruction and high-intensity oncology call.

Call & Hospital Responsibilities

Call is centered at St. Joseph’s Medical Center, just nine miles from the office. The ED sees over 100,000 visits annually but carries no trauma designation, which fundamentally changes the experience. You won’t be managing complex facial trauma or penetrating neck injuries.

Instead, call typically involves:

  • Epistaxis
  • Peritonsillar abscess drainage
  • Sudden hearing loss
  • Foreign body removal

There is also the option to take additional call at Lodi Memorial (about 10 miles away), which increases frequency but comes with additional stipend support. Importantly, you do not take call at the regional Level 2 trauma center — facial trauma cases are transferred and managed within that hospital’s employed network.

The clinic operates on EPIC. The hospital currently uses Cerner but plans to transition to EPIC in 2028. Remote access allows many consults to be handled without unnecessary trips in.

Infrastructure & Support

Your office at Trinity Parkway is fully equipped to support efficient, high-quality care:

  • In-office audiology for same-visit diagnostics
  • On-site CT imaging for streamlined surgical planning
  • EPIC EMR with strong regional interoperability

The practice does not sell hearing aids directly. Audiology provides diagnostics and counseling, but device purchases are handled externally. This keeps the focus on medical care rather than retail sales and avoids conflicts of interest.

Overall, this is a well-balanced, community-based ENT practice: strong demand, manageable call, modern infrastructure, and genuine flexibility to shape your surgical niche — all within a sustainable model designed for long-term professional and financial success.

Patient Population and Clinical Variety

The payor mix balances stability with profitability, with approximately 50% of patients covered by Medicare or managed Medicaid programs and the remainder carrying commercial insurance with fee-for-service reimbursement. This distribution provides the reliable patient base that government programs ensure while avoiding complete dependence on the lower reimbursement rates that Medicare establishes. You will see patients who reflect the community's economic diversity, from retirees on fixed incomes to middle-class families with employer-sponsored insurance to agricultural workers enrolled in Medi-Cal managed care plans.

Clinical variety comes naturally when you serve as the only ENT group in a community of over 300,000 residents. You will not find yourself performing the same three procedures on similar patients day after day, the monotony that develops in practices that have carved narrow procedural niches. Instead, your schedule includes the unpredictable mix that makes general ENT intellectually engaging: pediatric airway problems in the morning, sinus surgery planning before lunch, a thyroid biopsy in early afternoon, and evaluation of a vocal cord lesion before the day ends. This variety keeps your skills current across the full scope of ENT practice while building the clinical judgment that comes only from managing the complete spectrum of conditions in your specialty.

Your practice serves genuine clinical needs rather than marketing-driven demand for marginal procedures. These are patients with real problems seeking solutions from the only local specialist available to help them. They appreciate access to quality ENT care without drives to Sacramento or the Bay Area, and they demonstrate the loyalty and gratitude that comes when you provide competent, caring treatment in their own community. The six-month wait for appointments reflects not practice mismanagement but simple supply and demand: more people need ENT care than the current physicians can see. Your arrival immediately improves access, earning you referrals from grateful primary care physicians and word-of-mouth recommendations from satisfied patients who finally found the care they needed close to home.

© Copyright 2023 Pacific Companies. All Rights Reserved.