I am one of the oldest players in the game,' says Dr Henry Lee, beaming across a conference table long after the last patient in one of the nine Hong Kong medical practices that bear his name has left for the day.
At 67, Dr Lee may also be one of the wisest players in a game that is evolving rapidly into one of high stakes and rising risk. All the old rules, for so long a guarantee of prosperity for a select number of Hong Kong doctors, are being cut away like useless fat and dressed anew.
Forty years after he hung his sign on the door of his first practice, a 400-square-foot 'cheap clinic' in Sheung Wan which stayed open from 9am to 9pm, closing only for three days over Chinese New Year, Dr Lee now glows with an air of contentment.
Instead of worrying over the ongoing administration of Hong Kong's second largest medical group - with 16 doctors and 12 specialists seeing almost 1,000 patients a day and turning over tens of millions of dollars a year - he is slowing down and honing his golf swing.
The pressures of tending the sick while also keeping an eye on the financial bottom line and the looming shadow of cut-throat competition are no longer his to bear.
Dr Lee, for four decades a sole proprietor and master of his own destiny, has embraced big business. He says he 'saw the writing on the wall'. That was when he decided to sell out.
The name - Dr Henry Lee and Associates - is still prominently displayed at all his clinics. His patients, many of whom come from large organisations including the Mass Transit Railway Corporation, should not have noticed any difference in how they are treated.