Keith Newton, MD

Background

I didn't grow up wanting to be a doctor. In fact, I hadn't even considered it until late in my undergraduate education. Once I decided, I worked hard with a single-minded focus to make it happen.

But just as medical school admission was practically in the bag, I felt torn between pursuing my interests in business and medicine. I chose medicine, but promised myself I would never take a path that didn't allow for self-employment and building non-clinical businesses. A decade later, I was pain management doctor founding my own practice.

Founding a practice was another all-consuming pursuit. Like anything, I couldn't really go back and convey to my past self what I was in for. Some aspects were better than expected, others worse.

About a year into running the practice, I joined a group of generous physicians who gave advice on running a pain practice. This look into my future changed my life. These doctors are successful by most measures, but even the endgame didn't look like a life I want to live.

And that's without mentioning the build-up phase of a practice, which takes years. My build-up phase was going well, but it didn't leave time for me to pursue the kinds of business interests I'd been voraciously learning about for years. With what appeared to be a window of opportunity given advances in AI, I just couldn't bring myself to put off my entrepreneurial desires for that long.

So I decided to close my practice. It was a complicated decision that required life experience to build up to, but it wasn't a hard one.

Years prior, sometimes I'd ponder out loud, "Why don't I just give up on this whole pain management practice thing and start the business I really want to start while doing part-time anesthesiology?" What I thought was an unlikely plan B has become my life.

Education

• Pain Medicine Fellowship, University of California, Irvine, CA
• Anesthesiology Residency, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL
• Transitional Year, Redmond Regional Medical Center, Rome, GA
• M.D. University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
• M.S. Physiology, University of Cincinnati
• B.S. Biochemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara
• B.A. Statistical Science, University of California, Santa Barbara

Clinical Interests

• Regional Anesthesia
• Low Dose Naltrexone
• Opioids in Chronic Pain
• Pain Psychology

Personal

I enjoy weightlifting, running, cycling, and spending time with my friends and family.