Practice Management

Interdisciplinary medicine: lessons from the cockpit

Physician
November 19, 2025

In aviation, the right seat is typically reserved for the instructor. In medicine, it’s the role of the diagnostician, the mentor, the gatekeeper. I once piloted a T-37B “Tweet” trainer from the right seat, not as a student, but as someone trusted to guide. That experience shaped how I approach clinical decision-making, interdisciplinary fluency, and the choreography of care.

During a military training program, our squad faced a simulated obstacle: an …

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A financial vision to define your retirement [PODCAST]

Podcast
November 18, 2025
YouTube video

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Certified financial planners Michael Lynch and Alisa Olsen discuss their article “Create your own financial vision for independence,” an excerpt from their book Taking Care of Your Future: Your Simple System for …

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Is owning a medical practice worth the ultimate financial risk? [PODCAST]

Podcast
November 17, 2025
YouTube video

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Certified financial planner Paul Morton discusses his article “Physician practice ownership: risks, rewards, and reality.” Paul breaks down the massive differences between an employed physician’s financial journey and that of an equity …

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An attorney’s guide to your first physician contract [PODCAST]

Podcast
November 15, 2025
YouTube video

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Health attorney Dennis Hursh discusses his article “First physician employment agreement mistakes.” Dennis shares his amazement after 30 years in health law at the timidity of new attending physicians during contract negotiations. …

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Physician entrepreneurship and financial freedom

Finance
November 11, 2025

In a unique episode of the Wealth Planning for the Modern Physician podcast, host David Mandell, JD, MBA, sat down with a resident, although not your typical resident! Dr. Wendell Cole, an orthopedic surgery resident at the time, is also a fellow podcaster, author, and entrepreneur. Despite being in the early stages of his medical career, Dr. Cole had already built a track record of innovation and initiative. His story …

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How new physicians can build their career

Finance
October 24, 2025

Introduction

In a recent episode of the Wealth Planning for the Modern Physician podcast, host David Mandell, JD, MBA, welcomed Dr. Michael Ast, an orthopedic surgeon specializing in adult reconstruction and joint replacement surgery. Beyond being an accomplished clinician at the Hospital of Special Surgery in New York, Dr. Ast also lectures often on business and career issues, and is especially passionate about teaching younger physicians how to build their practices …

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Why doctors make bad financial decisions

Finance
October 24, 2025

Doctors, I like to think, are fairly intelligent people. We worked hard in school, extremely hard in residency, and continue to refine our skills decades into practice. In addition to being intellectual, we are often experts in our fields. We enjoy more respect and higher salaries than most professions. Our work can be humbling and challenging, and it exposes us to the flawed nature of humans. Despite deeply understanding that …

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First physician employment agreement mistakes

Finance
October 23, 2025

I have been representing physicians for over 30 years, and I am still amazed by the attitude of most young physicians going into their first attending position. These are smart, accomplished, fully qualified physicians who have received some of the best clinical training in the world. And yet, many of these highly trained individuals in a field with massive shortages seem reluctant to acknowledge even the slightest modicum of self-worth.

Bear …

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Protecting physicians when private equity buys in [PODCAST]

Podcast
October 22, 2025
YouTube video

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Veteran attorney Dennis Hursh discusses his article “Private practice employment agreements: What happens if private equity swoops in?” In this episode, Dennis explains how private equity acquisitions of medical practices complicate the …

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Why physicians need a personal CFO and how tax mitigation fits in

Finance
October 20, 2025

As a physician, you are no stranger to complexity. From the first days of medical school to the years of long shifts in residency, you make high-stakes decisions every day. Yet many doctors tell us they feel too busy, or under-resourced, to give their money the same level of care.

That is where a Personal CFO helps. Just as a hospital relies on a chief financial officer to align budgets, risks, …

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The link between financial literacy and physician burnout

Finance
October 14, 2025

An excerpt from The Savvy Physician: A Financial Wellness Handbook for Physicians and Professionals.

As a physician, helping people in need is among the greatest honors and privileges in the world. In the complex world of medicine, physicians and health care professionals have the opportunity and privilege to enormously contribute to patient well-being at a time of significant personal and/or family health crisis.

In addition, many physicians and health care professionals …

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Why direct primary care (DPC) models fail

Policy
October 13, 2025

I’m going to say something controversial: the DPC community’s obsession with “purity” is missing the point. After two decades designing health care financial models, negotiating payer & vendor contracts, and building compliance frameworks, I’ve learned that most alternative payment models don’t fail because they’re impure. They fail because someone forgot to do the math.

When $1 million can’t save a bad idea

The University of Houston medical school launched a direct primary …

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Building a practice and avoiding business pitfalls

Finance
October 8, 2025

In Season 1 of the Wealth Planning for the Modern Physician podcast, host David Mandell, JD, MBA, sat down with Dr. Desmond “Desi” McGuire, a respected ophthalmologist and founder of Retina Associates of Orange County. Their conversation traced Dr. McGuire’s path from childhood influences and early career choices to building a thriving practice and navigating the financial ups and downs of medical entrepreneurship. For physicians seeking guidance on balancing clinical …

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The difference between a leader, a manager, and an innovator

Physician
October 7, 2025

The gimmick of the day is to make -preneur the suffix of the year. Solopreneurs. Doctorpreneurs. Digipreneurs. Trumpreneurs. It should come as no surprise then, that leaderpreneur has appeared in your latest Google search. What is a leaderpreneur, anyway, and why should anyone care? Recognizing that there are as many definitions of leadership, entrepreneurship, and innovation as there are practitioners of those arts, here is my take:

Entrepreneurship is the pursuit …

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Why can’t finding a doctor job be like Zillow?

Finance
September 30, 2025

After seventeen years of marriage, I found myself divorced, co-parenting, and facing two of life’s most daunting transitions at once: reentering the dating world and buying a new home. The reasons were many: parenting stressors, mid-life transitions, childhood wounds, and outside influences. There was no doubt that my career as a full-time, call-taking anesthesiologist also played a role. While the brutal 24-hour calls and 80-hour weeks were mostly behind me, …

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Choosing a retirement plan for your medical clinic

Finance
September 27, 2025

Physicians who are also business owners have two jobs: treating patients and running their business. Hiring and keeping employees is one of the job descriptions of the latter. It is no surprise that choosing and maintaining employee benefits is not at the top of an exciting to-do list. Even if hospital systems are not your direct competition, they are often competing for …

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What is financial therapy for physicians?

Finance
September 20, 2025

Physicians dedicate years of training to caring for patients, often at the expense of their own financial well-being. While most doctors are well-versed in diagnosing illness, far fewer have the tools to diagnose the emotional and behavioral challenges that affect their relationship with money. In a recent episode of my podcast, I sat down with orthopedic surgeon Greg Gilot, MD, and financial therapist Erika Wasserman to explore the emerging field …

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A lawyer’s guide to physician side gigs

Policy
September 19, 2025

Remember the “before times” pre-pandemic, when most doctors had a single job that they went to every day, saw patients, did surgeries, took call for the same employer or practice?

Then in March 2020, the unthinkable happened. There was a worldwide shutdown of almost everything, including physicians’ offices, except for emergency rooms, ICUs, and other essential health care functions.

Once the realization set in that medicine was going to have to change …

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Create your own financial vision for independence

Finance
September 19, 2025

An excerpt from Taking Care of Your Future: Your Simple System for a Big Retirement.

Whose plan? Is it yours or someone else’s?

Your financial plan is too important to be someone else’s. It must be yours. This book will help make it so.

It all starts with your vision.

Ever notice that when you get a new car, you suddenly see the same model all over the road and in about every …

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Why physicians should not be their own financial planner

Finance
September 17, 2025

You spent years learning how to save lives, diagnose complex cases, and manage high-pressure situations. But nowhere in medical school did they teach you how to create a retirement plan, minimize taxes, or structure an investment portfolio.

Yet many doctors try to manage their own finances, thinking, “I am smart and disciplined; I can figure this out.” The truth? Being your own certified financial planner (CFP) often ends up costing more …

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