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 …
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 …
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 …
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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 …
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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: …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 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 …
When I stepped away from my clinical practice, it wasn’t because I didn’t care. It was because I cared deeply—about my patients, my colleagues, and the future of medicine. I didn’t leave to escape. I left to help heal the culture that was quietly breaking so many of us.
You can love medicine and stop seeing patients. You can love medicine and change the way you see patients. Choosing to follow …
The author of a recent article claimed that “we all lose” when an experienced physician prematurely leaves clinical medicine. Of course, it is inevitable that a clinical career will end, but whether patients and society suffer depends on what that retiring doctor does next. Increasingly, it seems, they pursue other ways to help patients and add value to the system by pursuing non-clinical careers. That’s a good thing, because:
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Have you ever asked yourself, “Why do your patients select you and your practice for their medical care?” Most medical practices offer the same service, i.e., evaluation and treatment, at approximately the same cost, and produce similar outcomes. After all, how many ways are there to treat a urinary tract infection, diabetes, hypertension, or arthritis? Most doctors are trained to offer similar services, which typically produce identical outcomes. So, why …
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Cardiologist Lauren Weber and critical care physician Jess Bunin, co-founders of All Levels Leadership, discuss their article, “Not all heroes wear capes: Sometimes they just speak up in meetings.” They reframe medical …
In the current era of rapid health care changes, a very effective tool for workforce development is research mentorship based on evidence-based principles. As the health care industry faces a worsening shortage of professionals, the need to cultivate talent, empower early-career clinicians, and guide them through structured research and professional development is becoming more urgent. Research mentorship offers a replicable and transformative framework for addressing the health workforce crisis.
Research mentorship …
In the high-stakes, knowledge-driven world of medicine, we’re taught from day one to project an aura of certainty. From the anatomy lab to the hospital wards, the message is clear: know the answers, lead with confidence, and never let them see you sweat. But what if that fixation on “knowing” is holding us back? What if the very traits we’ve been trained to cultivate—the resolute certainty, the surgical precision, the …
An excerpt from The Doctor is Out—Justice vs Injustice in America.
In the hug of a crisp autumn morning, with the world adorned in the warm hues of changing leaves, the seed of an idea took root within me—an idea born from the necessity of expanding my medical practice to accommodate the growing needs of my patients.
Crossing the convoluted corridors of administrative tasks and logistical considerations, I found myself confronted …
Are 10 percent (or 25 percent) of all the physicians in your specialty breaking the law?
Of course not! Who would think such a thing?
Your friendly neighborhood “nonprofit” hospital, that’s who!
I have been reviewing physician employment agreements for almost 40 years, and in the last few years I have noticed a spike in the number of agreements that “cap” physician salary. A shocking number of hospital employment agreements provide that the …
Medicine has long valorized the early riser – the physician who arrives before sunrise, who joins 7:30 a.m. meetings and stays for evening journal clubs, case conferences, and post-dinner networking events. These scheduling patterns have come to symbolize dedication, productivity, and professionalism. However, for many physicians, particularly those with caregiving responsibilities, these norms reflect more than tradition; they represent structural exclusion.
The architecture of medical professionalism was built on an outdated …
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