JH: I consider it my duty, my responsibility, to be a practice management expert and resource to emergency physicians so their practices will be financially successful. I have additionally always considered it a privilege to be an advocate for the specialty, be it in print, presentations, or payer negotiations. The bottom line is for us to absorb the business aspects of the specialty so the physicians can do what they went to medical school to do, and that is to take care of patients.

GH: I simply am the quarterback of an amazing team of 50-plus people in one of the nation’s largest emergency medicine staffing companies, a subsidiary that does the billing and the back-office business operations with talented directors, managers, and staff. It’s really my job to take the burden of all that nonclinical demand for success off of the clinicians’ shoulders and to create and implement high-performing solutions in the areas of information technology, government compliance, third-party audits, third-party enrollment, coding, billing, cash collection, manage care negotiations, and fee schedule maintenance.

CE: I feel like I have to keep reinventing myself. I own a very large technology coding and compliance company. In order to do that and represent what we do to support our clients, which are hospitals, physicians, and payers and a little bit more of everything, I’ve never been able to step away from the sense that I have to know the details. I feel like in order to represent the priorities and potential solutions to our physicians and our clients, I really have to understand the issues, which keep changing all the time. I always feel like I have to be down in the weeds on things in order to understand them well enough to provide the right kind of consultation, the right kind of advice to our docs.

Reference

1. Wilson M, Cutler D. Emergency department profits are likely to continue as the affordable care act expands coverage. Health Aff. 2014;33:792-799.