Dr. Bryan Jick’s efforts gave birth to a successful 35 person, diversified practice
How do you spot a budding entrepreneur?
In Dr. Bryan Jick’s case, the signs were all there long before he started his practice. An independent spirit. A sense of adventure. A willingness to do whatever it takes to reach a goal.
“I really wanted to travel before going to med school,” Dr. Jick recalls. “But I come from a divorced family—we didn’t have a lot of resources. It was just my mom, my brother, and me.” Where others might have reluctantly given up on the idea, Dr. Jick didn’t.
“I found a job as a waiter. Then, a second job as a waiter. I ended up waiting tables 55 hours a week for about a year. I saved as much as I could.” That’s a lot of waiting tables, but his grit paid off. He was able to jet off for a fantastic three-month adventure across Europe. He came home a week before starting medical school with plenty of memories, but not much else. “I had about $50 to my name and a lot of loans,” he laughingly says.
Despite a brief pre-med flirtation with becoming a chemistry professor, in his heart, Dr. Jick knew he’d rather be a doctor, but he wasn’t sure which specialty to choose. “In my third year, I decided to see what was out there. I did all the rotations plus electives—heart surgery; eye surgery. There were so many opportunities. Finally, it came down to making a list—here’s what I love to do and here’s what I don’t. Becoming an OB-GYN just felt right. You do surgery, deliver babies, and patients often stay with you a long, long time.” And 30 years later, that decision still feels right. “In OB-GYN, you have opportunities for joy that you don’t have in other areas of medicine.“
In those 30 years, Dr. Jick’s entrepreneurial spirit has been tested time and again. In 1990, just before going into practice with two doctors, one of them—just 46 years old—died after emergency surgery. Overnight, the three-doctor practice became just two. His other partner suffered a severe spinal injury, and by 1995 Dr. Jick was the only partner remaining. After a brief stint in HMO medicine, Dr. Jick returned to solo private practice. Eighteen years later, he has built it into a thriving medical group with 35 people, including five (soon to be six) OB-GYN doctors.
His forward-looking approach has made all the difference. When planning a move to a new office in 2009, he designed it without any chart space. The practice converted to electronic medical records starting a year before the move. Today, the practice offers everything from high-risk pregnancy care (their doctors have delivered more than 200 sets of twins), to robotic hysterectomy, a full-time OB-GYN ultrasound department, a bioidentical hormone program, and a medi-spa.
“There’s some stress in having to manage as we grow—more overhead, more corporate issues,” Dr. Jick notes. “But now we have an amazing management team. Where I used to do nearly everything myself, now the team even hires people I haven’t met—and those new hires are wonderful!”
CAP has been with Dr. Jick every step of the way. “The very first doctor that ever hired me brought me into CAP in 1988. And every single time I needed CAP, it has given me their very best.”
Dr. Jick and his wife Marina have been married for almost 34 years and have two sons—the oldest a lawyer, and the youngest a video game concept artist. Marina, who started her career as a software engineer, has become a nurse practitioner and runs the practice’s medi-spa.
The couple loves to travel. They’ve been all over the map from the Caribbean and Europe to Australia and New Zealand. But as you might expect from someone with his entrepreneurial drive, Dr. Jick’s main hobby is work.
“There’s always something new to think about and I love being able to help our patients as we continually incorporate technological advances in medicine and computers into our day-to-day practice.”
DR. BRYAN JICK AT-A-GLANCE
Medical Specialty: Obstetrics and Gynecology
Practice Location: Pasadena, California
Years in Practice: 30
CAP Member Since: 1988