Cut & Tell

Dr. Karen Horton was a few years into practice, and six months pregnant with twins, when a legal letter arrived: her senior colleague was leaving. She had 48 hours to buy her out or walk away with no practice, no staff, and no patients.In this episode of First Job M&M, San Francisco plastic surgeon Dr. Karen Horton walks through what went wrong in her first job: new consults that vanished from her schedule, a website that went dark, and an office stripped of its furniture and art. She also explains how she came out of it with the team she still works with today, and why it turned out to be the best decision she ever made. If you're heading toward your first job, this episode covers what to look for in a contract, why you need your own lawyer and banker before a crisis, and how to know your way out before you sign. 📚 Referenced: Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara; Someone Has to Be the Most Expensive, Why Not Make It You? by Andrew GriffithsHost: Liz Malphrus, MDConnect with Liz: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/liz-malphrus-mdIG: @dr.malphrusGuest: Karen Horton, MDlearn more: https://www.drkarenhorton.com/IG: @drkarenhortonProduced By: The Hippocratic CollectiveSubscribe to @hippocraticcollective on Youtube for all of the other shows and content the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

Why hasn’t showing patients prices made healthcare cheaper? For more than a decade, policymakers bet that price transparency would let patients shop around and push costs down. Liz looks at what actually happened, from the ACA’s vague “standard charges” language to chargemasters, hospital price tools, and the No Surprises Act. She also shares what she’s learned setting prices as a first-year aesthetic surgeon, including why cheaper can look worse to patients. Her conclusion: if we want real transparency, it has to come from health insurers.Rate, review, and subscribe, and find more shows at the Hippocratic Collective.

What do interviewers actually remember about you? It isn’t your answers. In this episode, plastic surgeon Dr. Liz Malphrus goes past the standard “be yourself” advice and shares what worked on the plastic surgery interview trail. She covers the wild rooms, including Operation, paper-folding tests, and a question that should never have been asked. She also explains how she prepared, which questions to ask and which to avoid, why the coordinator and the resident room matter, and how to handle the social event. Plus, a preview of a new recurring segment: First Job M&M.Host: Liz Malphrus, MDConnect with Liz: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/liz-malphrus-mdIG: @dr.malphrusProduced By: The Hippocratic CollectiveSubscribe to @hippocraticcollective on Youtube for all of the other shows and content the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

What if doctors ran medicine the way lawyers run law? Lawyers, accountants and dentists have kept control of their professions, while physicians have lost control of both who owns them and who pays them. Liz looks at corporate practice of medicine laws that exist on paper but not in practice, the ERISA provision that shields insurers from liability for denials that harm patients, and vertical integration from UnitedHealth/Optum. She then lays out what physicians can do to win back professional sovereignty.Referenced: Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine; Zhu et al, "A doctrine in name only," NEJM (2023)Host: Liz Malphrus, MDConnect with Liz: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/liz-malphrus-mdIG: @dr.malphrusProduced By: The Hippocratic CollectiveSubscribe to @hippocraticcollective on Youtube for all of the other shows and content the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

What happens when you become the surgeon, pay off the loans, and still feel empty?On Cut & Tell’s first guest episode, Dr. Mel Thacker (ENT, surgeon coach, and host of Surgeons with Purpose) joins me to talk about her new memoir, Scrubbing In. It covers her path from childhood neglect to surgery, the arrival fallacy, and the panic attacks in the OR that finally forced her to face it all.We also get into how insurance incentives quietly shape clinical decisions, why Mel walked away from private practice, why residency needs coaching, and how she built a part-time locums career on her own terms.📚 Referenced: Scrubbing In: A Surgeon’s Journey from Self-Doubt to Wholeness by Dr. Mel Thacker; “When Incentives Become Instinct” (Hippocratic Collective); The Infinite Game by Simon SinekEnjoyed this episode? Rate, review, and subscribe, and find more shows at hippocratic-collective.com.Host: Liz Malphrus, MDConnect with Liz: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/liz-malphrus-mdIG: @dr.malphrusProduced By: The Hippocratic CollectiveSubscribe to @hippocraticcollective on Youtube for all of the other shows and content the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.