Practical write-ups and the MD-Universe Podcast — on licensing, reimbursement, and the business of medicine. Free, no account needed.
Transitional care management pays $220 to $299 for a follow-up visit most practices already schedule, yet national claims data show the code going unbilled after the overwhelming majority of eligible discharges — and half the time the qualifying visit happened anyway and went out as a $136 problem visit. The difference is a phone call inside two business days.
Medicare's longitudinal-care add-on paid out $394 million in its first year, yet two-thirds of physicians never billed it once. The code takes no extra documentation, attaches to visits you are already doing, and the 2025 and 2026 rule changes quietly widened it. The arithmetic on leaving it off runs to five figures a year.
Milliman's 2025 benchmarking puts commercial professional reimbursement at 148% of Medicare and hospital outpatient at 263%. Same procedure, same day, and the multiple nearly doubles depending on who owns the room. Meanwhile 37% of practices have never once reopened the contract that sets the 148%.
Thirty-two states bar corporations from practising medicine. The management services organisation is how capital got in anyway — and the 2026 legislative wave is the first serious attempt to close the gap.
Ownership is not one decision with one price. It ranges from a $30,000 direct-care practice to a surgery-center stake to a hospital Congress has banned you from building. Here is the real cost of each.
With the federal ban gone, the practical route is not a legal challenge after the fact. It is a narrower clause agreed before you sign — and scope is where employers actually have room.
Physician employment disputes are remarkably unoriginal. The same handful of structural traps recur across specialities and markets — and all of them are visible before signing.
A decade of training for clinical competence, and effectively zero hours for the negotiation that determines your income, your mobility and your legal exposure for years afterwards.
Locums gets framed as a burnout escape hatch or a gap-filler between real jobs. Treated as a deliberate instrument, it is neither — and it opens retirement options a W-2 job never will.
Rates run $500 to $1,000 an hour, and most physicians doing this work charge well under market — largely because nobody tells them what market is.
No call, no panel, no clinic. Chart review has moved from a retirement-era wind-down to a routine income stream for physicians in the middle of their careers.
Malpractice cover gets treated as an onboarding formality. Four specific clauses account for nearly every unpleasant surprise physicians report.
Claims-made policies are cheap up front because the real cost arrives the day you leave. Here is how to find out what you owe before it becomes a five-figure surprise.