Practice Management

When your identity is your job: Why it’s dangerous in medicine

Physician

September 6, 2025

In some careers, your job is not something you do; it is something you are. Medicine, acting, and politics are intimate, high-visibility professions that blur the lines between personal identity and professional role. You are not just executing a skill; you are bringing your whole self into the room, exposed and accountable.

When things are going well, that visibility can feel exhilarating. You are recognized, affirmed, even admired. Your face becomes …

Why doctors should rethink investing compared to the average U.S. investor [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

September 2, 2025

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Attorney and wealth manager David B. Mandell discusses his article “Why physicians are unlike the ‘average’ investor,” highlighting why doctors face unique financial challenges compared to most U.S. investors. David explains the …

How to balance clinical duties with building a startup

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA

Physician

August 29, 2025

I’m often asked about how to pursue a physician entrepreneurial career pathway. Like Peter Medawar opined in his “Advice to a young scientist”, allow me to offer some advice:

You will not learn about innovation or entrepreneurship in medical school or residency. Medical education is designed to teach students clinical care and research methods. If you have an entrepreneurial interest, you will have to pursue it using alternative …

How hospitals can prepare for CMS’s new patient safety rule

Kim Adelman, PhD

Conditions

August 26, 2025

Medical errors happen every day, and patients are being harmed in hospitals. Despite years of tracking and reporting outcome-based quality measures, preventable harm remains widespread, prompting the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to launch the Patient Safety Structural Measure (PSSM). This measure, released in August 2024, focuses on structural and cultural root causes of harm rather than just retrospective results of quality improvement initiatives.

In our consultancy practice, we’re …

Physician practice ownership: risks, rewards, and reality

Paul Morton, CFP

Finance

August 26, 2025

A physician’s financial journey isn’t always linear, and the journey can’t always be predicted in a how-to book. While the hospital-employed physician normally gravitates toward a path filled with benefits and retirement plans, the equity owner physician, or physician practice owner—both terms used interchangeably—has a much different pathway. Let’s dive into the equity owner physician a bit further.

Why choose ownership?

Like the term “business owner,” equity ownership physician is a generic …

Why physician strikes are a form of hospice

Patrick Hudson, MD

Physician

August 24, 2025

I have only recently started thinking about strikes. They seemed like something other people did: railway workers, bus drivers, teachers, dockworkers. People with contracts. People who clocked in and out. Not doctors. Not surgeons. Certainly not me.

You and I were supposed to absorb and adapt. To advocate from within. And we did, for a long time. We bent ourselves into shapes that did not fit. Worked around all the broken …

Civil discourse as a survival skill in health care [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

August 23, 2025

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Critical care physician Jess Bunin, co-founder of All Levels Leadership, discusses the article, “Civil discourse as a leadership competency: the case for curiosity in medicine.” They challenge a core tenet …

Why hiring physician intrapreneurs is the future of health care leadership

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA

Physician

August 23, 2025

Surthriving in the brave new world of sick care requires not just a new playbook, but players with new skill sets to execute the plans. Knowledge technicians are as obsolete as an NFL team with a running game but without a passing and special teams plan. Unfortunately, HR managers are getting it wrong. The biggest risk to future success and becoming a disruptor is a company’s existing …

Private practice employment agreements: What happens if private equity swoops in?

Dennis Hursh, Esq

Conditions

August 21, 2025

Physicians joining private practices have a relatively new issue they should be aware of. As more practices are taken over by private equity, the traditional concerns of a physician joining a practice as an employee with the hope of becoming an owner are heightened.

Traditionally, the physician would join the practice as an employee, work for a few years, and get the “golden ring” of ownership after a few years. Often …

Why health care can’t survive on no-fail missions alone

Wendy Schofer, MD

Physician

August 20, 2025

We don’t send SEAL teams into the field without backup, but we routinely send health care workers into no-win situations and tell them: don’t fail.

I celebrated friendship and teamwork during a Change of Command ceremony this week—full of honor, tradition, and those stirring reminders of what it means to lead. But one repeated phrase stuck in my craw: “This is a no-fail mission.”

It’s meant to inspire. It’s meant to light …

Smart asset protection strategies every doctor needs

Paul Morton, CFP

Finance

August 19, 2025

Don’t let a lawsuit undo decades of hard work. Here’s how to keep your wealth safe!

According to the American Medical Association, approximately one-third of all physicians will face a malpractice lawsuit, and just under 2 percent of physicians will face a lawsuit each year. While the volume of lawsuits seems high, roughly half of these lawsuits are considered frivolous. These statistics should prompt any physician to add asset protection measures …

How mindful leadership transforms physician wellness

Jessie Mahoney, MD

Physician

August 14, 2025

The culture of medicine is shaped in quiet ways, by the way meetings begin, the pregnant pauses before a response, and the energy transmitted in emails sent and received. These seemingly insignificant experiences ripple outward, setting the tone for entire teams, shaping what is spoken and what is not, shaping what feels possible and what feels unsafe.

The culture of medicine is not an abstract force. It is built moment by …

Why your digital first impression matters more than ever [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

August 6, 2025

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Health care marketing strategist Sara Meyer discusses her article, “First impressions happen online—not in your exam room.” She explains why a physician’s online presence is often the deciding factor for potential patients …

How hospitals use salary caps to suppress physician wages [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

August 3, 2025

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Health law attorney Dennis Hursh discusses his article, “Why hospitals are quietly capping top doctors’ pay.” For nearly 40 years, he has reviewed physician employment agreements and reveals a shocking recent trend: …

Why taxing remittances harms families and global health care

Dalia Saha, MD

Finance

July 29, 2025

Like many of my fellow physicians, I suspect I’m two things: a child of immigrants and a child of a physician. That combination gave me a unique window into two fundamental systems, health care and global economics, long before I studied either formally. I saw the sacrifices and hard choices required to navigate both, often simultaneously, with no geographic boundary ever limiting our responsibilities.

Many vivid memories from childhood have stayed …

A physician employment agreement term that often tricks physicians

Dennis Hursh, Esq

Finance

July 25, 2025

Lately, I have seen a few instances where physicians have been tricked by a term in their physician employment agreement that clearly does not mean what the physician thinks it means.

The most recent example came when I was negotiating a physician employment agreement, and the physician suggested verbiage concerning her scheduling. The physician suggested that we ask for language that the employer would develop a clinical schedule “after consultation with …

Building trust in dyad leadership partnerships

Amir Atabeygi, MD, MHA and Christina Mitchell, MHA

Physician

July 24, 2025

What’s a dyad and how do I fit into it?

What do I do? These are the questions every new health care leader asks themselves, as I did, when they first join a dyad partnership. Although there has been much academic writing regarding leadership dyads in health care, with a macro focus on structure and accountability and implementation, there is a paucity of material on the practical aspects of a dyad …

Why hospital jobs are failing physicians: burnout, pay, and lost autonomy

Justin Nabity, CFP

Finance

July 20, 2025

Hospital employment was once billed as the solution to the headaches of private practice — a way to gain stability, reduce administrative burden, and focus on patient care. But for many physicians, that promise has come undone.

According to the Physicians Foundation’s 2024 report, 60 percent of physicians report frequent feelings of burnout — the highest level on record. Instead of feeling supported, many employed physicians feel …

Why enterprise risk management is key to value-based health care success

Olumuyiwa Bamgbade, MD

Physician

July 19, 2025

The evolving contemporary era of value-based health care (VBHC) demands new risk leadership. VBHC emphasizes quality, outcomes, safety, equity, and stakeholder satisfaction. With these goals come complex, cross-cutting risks, including workforce shortages, clinical complications, health care staff safety, cyberattacks, and supply chain disruptions. To address the modern risk situation, health care systems must allocate resources to resilient, enterprise-wide risk governance and innovations.

The enterprise risk management (ERM) framework is the centerpiece …

The shocking risk every smart student faces when applying to medical school

Curtis G. Graham, MD

Physician

July 18, 2025

The threats we face throughout our medical practice years are rarely published in the world medical practice literature for a good reason. The medical practice system has so many disruptive, threatening, and hidden educational factors to confess to that it is a miracle we have any American physicians still practicing today. That needs to be changed.

Most physicians in private medical practice, who suffer the most economically, are now reaching their …