They say that a journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step.

Note that the saying doesn’t discriminate between heading in the right direction or the wrong direction.

We all place a different value on what we receive and we’re willing to pay a comparable price. It has nothing to do with the cost to the producer or provider.

We still love you but, hey, we’re in love with someone else who spends less on clothes stipends.

Conflicts of interest. Everyone’s talking about them. Do you have one? They’re apparently bad. Or are they?

We kids joked that “new math” was going to make 1 plus 1 equal 3. Despite our teacher’s inability to conceive that it ever could, in the domain of medical group mergers 1 plus 1 can equal 3.

Let’s say that you’re the CEO of a hospital with fifty or five hundred employed physicians. Who’s your competition? The hospital five miles down the road?

Hospitals are focusing their hard and few-earned dollars exactly where it counts, spending big bucks on the physician executives who will surely rescue them from nosocomial existential syndrome: chief officers of this or that trendy trend.

One thing’s for certain, it will be no more walk in the park for the seven defendants convicted for their roles in a bribe and kickback scheme.

Depending on the circumstances, there might be ways to legally structure deal participation on the part of referring physicians. On the other hand, some deals just stink from the start. The problem, of course is determining which is which.

Just like your leg bone is connected to your knee bone, many of your contracts are connected to each other even though you might not readily know it. You can obtain significant leverage by making sure the agreements are coordinated.