Practice management

2,080 articles · Since 2017

Physicians writing on KevinMD about running a practice: staffing and overhead, the payer paperwork that arrives with every patient, ownership and consolidation, the administrators and executives who now employ most physicians, and the models physicians have built to get out from under all of it. Four maintained records draw on this archive: Primary care: what physicians say, in their own words, Direct primary care: what physicians say, in their own words, Physicians and administrators: what physicians say about who runs medicine, in their own words, and Private equity and corporate medicine: what physicians say, in their own words.

Latest articles

Health technology

Nobody owns your EHR templates, and it shows in every note

Karan Kanwar

October 9, 2026Oct 9, 2026

A physician pulls up a patient's medication list mid-visit and stops. Something's off. The patient stopped that drug months ago, and the list never caught up. Nothing in the system flagged it; the physician just happened to notice. Ask who's…

A physician pulls up a patient’s medication list mid-visit and stops. Something’s off. The patient stopped that drug months ago, and the list never caught up. Nothing in the system flagged it; the physician just happened to notice. Ask who’s responsible for making sure that gets caught every time, and nobody has an answer.

Someone built that list years ago, correctly, for a patient who’s since moved on to a different …

Physician voices

Physician leaders at the bedside see what dashboards miss

Manoj Sreedharan, MD

October 8, 2026Oct 8, 2026

Some of the most useful information I get as a medical director does not come from a dashboard or a meeting. It comes from working a clinical shift. When you are seeing patients alongside the people affected by the processes…

Some of the most useful information I get as a medical director does not come from a dashboard or a meeting. It comes from working a clinical shift.

When you are seeing patients alongside the people affected by the processes you help oversee, problems become difficult to ignore. You see where the workflow slows down, where responsibilities are unclear, and where a seemingly simple administrative change creates extra work. That is …

Physician voices

The physician independent contractor path is a third option

Paul B. Johnson, MD

October 3, 2026Oct 3, 2026

For much of my medical training, I assumed there were two basic career paths for physicians. You could become an employed physician, trading some autonomy for stability and institutional support. Or you could own a practice, accepting the administrative and…

I ultimately chose neither.

For approximately a decade, I have built my clinical career primarily as an independent contractor. As an …

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Physician finance

The 457(b) plan risks physicians sign without knowing

Mike Chando, MBA

October 3, 2026Oct 3, 2026

On a Tuesday evening, Dr. Anna Reyes is offered a partnership in an independent group across town. Accepting means leaving the nonprofit health system that employs her, and the buy-in requires capital within the year. Anna is hypothetical. That night,…

That night, she opens the statement for the 457(b) deferred compensation plan she has funded for eight years. The balance is about $500,000. She wants to know how much of it she can …

Physician finance

Dennis Hursh, Esq, on physician employment contracts: a KevinMD subscriber spotlight

Subscriber Spotlight by KevinMD

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

Dennis Hursh, Esq is a health law attorney with more than 40 years of experience and the founder of Physician Agreements Health Law, which reviews physician employment agreements for a fixed fee. He has published 27 essays on KevinMD since…

…

Health technology

After-hours charting isn’t a backlog. It’s a team problem.

Karan Kanwar

September 29, 2026Sep 29, 2026

The last patient leaves around six. Dinner happens, eventually, and the kids go down around eight. The laptop comes back out after that, open to a stack of notes from a day that had exactly zero room in it for…

Two-fifteen was the closest thing to a gap today, and a nurse used it to grab labs. Four-thirty had five minutes, spent walking a worried mother back to the …

Physician finance

Revenue cycle management is more than medical billing

GetPracticeHelp

September 28, 2026Sep 28, 2026

Ask an independent practice owner who handles the revenue cycle and the answer is usually the name of a billing company. Ask what that company actually does each month and the answer gets shorter. Claims go out. Payments get posted. Denials get worked. Statements get mailed. That is medical billing, and it is valuable work. It is not the same thing as managing the revenue cycle, and the space …

Patient voices

Improving patient access starts with board governance

Donna Harvin‑Graham, MBA

September 24, 2026Sep 24, 2026

In most medical practices, daily operations rely on a familiar routine. Information moves between teams as appointments begin, and direct care continues alongside the administrative tasks that support it. These processes were designed years ago, built around historical demands and earlier models of care delivery. As patient needs change and clinical pressures grow more complex, the supporting systems beneath them do not always keep pace. Gaps begin to appear in …

Physician finance

Physicians paid for G2211 twice. Most never bill it.

Michael Duben, MD

September 23, 2026Sep 23, 2026

In 2024, Medicare cut every physician's rates about 2 percent to fund a code that 3 out of 4 of them never billed. The cut was automatic. The code has to be claimed by hand. The code is G2211. CMS…

In 2024, Medicare cut every physician’s rates about 2 percent to fund a code that 3 out of 4 of them never billed. The cut was automatic. The code has to be claimed by hand.

The code is G2211. CMS calls it a visit complexity add-on. In plain words, it pays for office visits where you are the patient’s ongoing doctor, either as the continuing focal point for all their care …

Health policy

Private equity in medicine did not kill private practice

Brian Hudes, MD

September 21, 2026Sep 21, 2026

On September 16, Senators Warren, Wyden, and Merkley, with Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Hoyle, and Subramanyam, introduced the Stop Corporate Takeovers of Physicians Act. Modeled on an Oregon law that took effect this year, it would bar private equity funds, insurers, and other for-profit corporations from owning or controlling medical practices, close the friendly-physician loophole, and limit restrictive covenants. Most physicians will like most of what is in it. I do.

But the …

The Podcast by KevinMD

Insurance companies are being sued over directories that aren’t real [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

September 17, 2026Sep 17, 2026

Your insurance company says these therapists take your plan. Most of them do not. That is the allegation behind seven class action lawsuits now moving through courts from Massachusetts to California. Attorney Steve Cohen returns to explain what his firm…

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Physician finance

Why physician financial freedom matters more than salary

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

September 17, 2026Sep 17, 2026

An excerpt from Essays and Echoes: Reflections from a Life in Medicine. In the CBS series Blue Bloods, the 2014 episode "Most Wanted" finds Assistant District Attorney Erin Reagan considering leaving her government job to join a private law firm.…

An excerpt from Essays and Echoes: Reflections from a Life in Medicine.

In the CBS series Blue Bloods, the 2014 episode “Most Wanted” finds Assistant District Attorney Erin Reagan considering leaving her government job to join a private law firm. The appeal is clear. The new job would pay much more, and her daughter is nearing college age. Erin is not choosing between good and greed. She is …

The Podcast by KevinMD

Burnout isn’t only about autonomy, it’s about your bank account [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

September 16, 2026Sep 16, 2026

Physicians stay in jobs they cannot afford to leave. The wellness conversation talks about resilience and meaning, and never about what is in your bank account. Stanley Liu, cardiologist, financial planner, and founder of DocEmpowered, returns with a concept traditional…

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Physician finance

Charitable giving for physicians: 7 strategies for 2026

Logan Foltz, MD

September 12, 2026Sep 12, 2026

Americans give hundreds of billions of dollars to charity each year, making philanthropy a defining feature of our national culture. That generosity benefits more than the organizations and communities receiving support: Research suggests that giving can also improve the donor’s happiness, sense of purpose, and connection to others. Our government actively encourages this behavior through charitable tax deductions and other incentives, reflecting a longstanding public-policy judgment that private generosity …

Physician finance

The sweet spot before physician financial independence

Stanley Liu, MD

September 12, 2026Sep 12, 2026

Many physicians believe they can't escape burnout or an unsustainable career until they've become financially independent. Thankfully, it's not true. The idea of financial independence (FI) is simple: build enough wealth such that earned income becomes optional. For financial planners,…

Many physicians believe they can’t escape burnout or an unsustainable career until they’ve become financially independent. Thankfully, it’s not true.

The idea of financial independence (FI) is simple: build enough wealth such that earned income becomes optional. For financial planners, financial independence is a mathematical problem to solve. I might be able to run your numbers in a Monte Carlo analysis and demonstrate you have, say, an 84 percent chance of …

Physician finance

Negotiating physician compensation works better in groups

Contract Diagnostics

September 10, 2026Sep 10, 2026

Most physicians who have ever asked for a raise or tried negotiating their compensation have likely heard some version of the same sentence: "We have a standard package for the whole department. I can't make an exception for you." Most…

Most physicians who have ever asked for a raise or tried negotiating their compensation have likely heard some version of the same sentence: “We have a standard package for the whole department. I can’t make an exception for you.”

Most doctors hear that as a brush-off. It isn’t. It’s the most honest thing an administrator will say to you all year.

They genuinely can’t do it. A one-off adjustment creates a parity …

Physician finance

How doctors lose money investing: 6 failure modes

Harsha Moole, MD

September 9, 2026Sep 9, 2026

I have been pitched investments in a doctors' lounge, at a conference dinner, and twice in a specialty group chat. Every one of them came from another physician. That is not bad luck. That is the design. This piece is…

I have been pitched investments in a doctors’ lounge, at a conference dinner, and twice in a specialty group chat. Every one of them came from another physician. That is not bad luck. That is the design.

This piece is about the specific ways physician money gets lost, and what actually works against each one. Not general advice about saving more. Named failure modes, with the fix for each. I have …

Physician voices

Hiring medical office staff who actually follow through

Neil Baum, MD

September 9, 2026Sep 9, 2026

There are two types of employees: the go-getters and the gunnas. The go-getters are those who have a clear vision of setting out to do something, giving it their all, and accomplishing it. They don’t need to be monitored. They are the first to arrive for a meeting or at work and the last to leave at the end of the day. They are self-starters and serve as role models …

Physician finance

Credit balances in medical practices have a deadline

GetPracticeHelp

September 8, 2026Sep 8, 2026

Most independent practices know their accounts receivable to the dollar. Far fewer can say what their credit balances total, how old the oldest one is, or who is supposed to be doing something about them. A credit balance sits in the practice management system as a negative number on a patient or payer account, it rarely triggers an alert, and it quietly inflates the bank balance the owner looks at …

The Podcast by KevinMD

Why weak branding is costing private practices patients and talent [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

September 7, 2026Sep 7, 2026

Patients now choose doctors the way they shop for everything else, judging your practice online before they walk in. Ashley Gay, a branding expert, argues that a strong brand is not about ego but about earning trust, and that physicians…

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Practice management

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