Sunday, August 23, 2026

Glenda Dorton Expected to Walk Again. What Her Story Teaches Every Physician About the Hidden Danger of Healthcare Workflows

A devastating medication error in Nashville exposes a bigger healthcare problem: when bad information travels too far, patients, physicians, and practices pay the price.



“We identified the cause and have implemented corrective safeguards.”Dr. Shubhada Jagasia, President and CEO, Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital Midtown


The Problem With Calling Healthcare Errors “Human Error”

Glenda Dorton did not go to the hospital looking for a miracle.

She went looking for a knee replacement.

On August 14, 2026, the 72-year-old avid gardener from Centerville, Tennessee, arrived at Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital Midtown in Nashville for what was supposed to be a routine procedure.

Her husband, Marvin Dorton, had been married to her for more than 50 years.

Her family expected a difficult recovery.

They did not expect their lives to change.

According to her family, Glenda woke after the procedure with a burning sensation and could not feel or move her lower body.

Her daughter-in-law, Kristina Dorton, later said the family was told Glenda had T6 paralysis.

The knee replacement itself had reportedly gone well.

The rest of the story did not.

Glenda's family says she received the wrong medication during the procedure. The hospital initially described an unidentified event affecting four patients. It has since acknowledged a pharmacy error involving four joint-replacement patients and said it implemented additional safeguards. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating.

The other three patients have not been publicly identified.

And this is where the story gets bigger than Glenda.

Because Kristina Dorton did not respond by saying:

“Find someone to blame.”

She said:

“We’re not looking to ruin somebody’s life. They need to figure it out, so it never happens.”

That sentence contains a lesson for every healthcare leader.

The goal of patient safety is not to find the guilty person.

The goal is to build a system in which the next person does not have to become the next Glenda Dorton.

And that brings me to something that may sound strange at first.

What does Glenda Dorton's story have to do with medical billing?

Quite a lot.


Here Is My Contrarian Take

Healthcare has spent decades trying to make people work harder inside broken workflows.

We call it:

Quality improvement.

Revenue-cycle optimization.

Workflow enhancement.

Digital transformation.

Artificial intelligence.

Automation.

Interoperability.

Sometimes it is just a very expensive way of saying:

“We built another screen.”

I think we are asking the wrong question.

The question should not be:

How can we make the workflow faster?

It should be:

How can we make the workflow harder to get wrong?

That is a very different problem.

And it is the problem that interests me as a physician and founder of OnnX.


Four Patients Should Change the Question

The Nashville incident reportedly involved four patients undergoing joint-replacement procedures.

That number matters.

One error can be a terrible individual mistake.

Four patients affected by the same event suggests something larger.

It suggests that healthcare leaders should look beyond the person who touched the medication.

They should examine the system that allowed the same problem to reach multiple patients.

That does not mean blaming the pharmacy.

It does not mean blaming the physician.

It does not mean blaming the anesthesiologist.

In fact, Glenda's family has specifically emphasized that they do not want individual healthcare workers blamed.

It means asking a better question:

Where was the last opportunity to catch the error?

That question is incredibly important.

Because the same question applies to medical billing.


The Billing Error Nobody Sees

Imagine this.

A physician sees a patient.

The visit goes well.

The physician documents the encounter.

The patient goes home.

Everyone thinks the job is finished.

It isn't.

Now the documentation becomes data.

The data becomes codes.

The codes become a claim.

The claim enters a clearinghouse.

The payer interprets the claim.

And eventually, someone discovers something is wrong.

Maybe the diagnosis doesn't support the procedure.

Maybe a modifier is missing.

Maybe the documentation doesn't clearly support the billed service.

Maybe payer policy has changed.

Maybe the authorization doesn't match.

Maybe eligibility information was wrong.

Maybe the claim contains a subtle inconsistency nobody noticed.

The claim is denied.

Then somebody starts digging.

The physician gets an email.

The biller opens the chart.

The coder reviews the note.

The office manager gets involved.

Someone calls the payer.

Someone resubmits.

Someone waits.

And someone says:

“Why didn't we catch this earlier?”

Exactly.

Why didn't we?


Healthcare Has a Timing Problem

This is the part of healthcare technology that doesn't get enough attention.

An error becomes more expensive the longer it travels.

At the beginning, an error may take seconds to fix.

Later, it may take minutes.

After submission, it may take hours.

After denial, it may take days.

After an appeal, potentially much longer.

The same principle applies clinically.

A medication mistake caught before administration is a near miss.

A mistake caught immediately after administration may still allow rapid intervention.

A mistake discovered after harm occurs becomes something entirely different.

Timing matters.

The earlier the intervention, the cheaper and safer the correction.

That should be the foundation of modern healthcare technology.


The Industry's Favorite Mistake

We often build systems that are excellent at documenting what happened.

But we are less good at preventing what is about to happen.

Our systems are retrospective.

They tell us:

Here is the denial.

Here is the missed authorization.

Here is the coding error.

Here is the medication event.

Here is the complaint.

Here is the unpaid claim.

Here is the problem.

Thanks.

Could you have told us five minutes earlier?

That is where predictive and validation technology becomes interesting.

Not because AI is fashionable.

Because timing is everything.


The OnnX Thesis

This is why I founded OnnX.

My belief is simple:

Medical billing is not primarily a billing problem. It is a data-quality problem.

The biller is often blamed for a problem that started somewhere else.

The coder is asked to fix documentation that was incomplete upstream.

The billing department is asked to solve payer problems created by inconsistent information.

The physician is pulled back into the chart.

And everyone wonders why revenue-cycle management is so expensive.

The answer is often hiding in plain sight.

The claim is arriving at the billing department carrying problems that should have been detected earlier.


Stop Calling It Revenue-Cycle Management

Maybe we need a different phrase.

Instead of:

Revenue-cycle management

I would argue for:

Revenue-cycle reliability.

Because management sounds like:

Process the claims.

Follow up on denials.

Work the A/R.

Send appeals.

Reliability asks:

Why did the problem happen in the first place?

That changes the entire conversation.


The Human Cost of a Denial

A denied claim does not look dramatic.

There is no ambulance.

No ICU.

No family gathered around a hospital bed.

Just a little red status on a computer screen.

Denied.

But behind that little word is a human being.

A biller.

A coder.

A practice manager.

A physician.

Someone has to fix it.

And that person already has a full workload.

This is why I think we have underestimated the human cost of administrative waste.

Every unnecessary denial consumes human attention.

And human attention is one of the scarcest resources in healthcare.


Physicians Don't Need More Software

Let me say something that may annoy the health-tech industry.

Physicians do not need another dashboard.

They need fewer problems.

They do not want to log into another platform at 7:30 p.m. to admire a beautiful visualization of their denial rate.

They want to know:

What is going wrong?

Why?

What do I need to do?

And can you help me prevent it from happening again?

That is the difference between technology theater and useful technology.


AI Has a Role. But It Is Not the Role Everyone Thinks.

I am bullish on AI.

But I am skeptical of AI theater.

Putting the word “AI” in front of a workflow does not make the workflow intelligent.

AI should not simply make bad processes faster.

That would be like putting a turbocharger on a car with no steering wheel.

Very impressive.

Very fast.

Still a terrible idea.

The better use of AI is validation.

Look at the information.

Compare the relationships.

Find inconsistencies.

Identify risk.

Explain the problem.

Escalate the exception.

Let the human decide.

That is where AI can become genuinely useful.


What OnnX Is Trying to Do Differently

The goal is not to replace physicians.

It is not to eliminate experienced billing professionals.

It is not to create a mysterious black box that tells a clinic:

“Trust the AI.”

The goal is much more practical.

Connect clinical reality with payer requirements before the claim leaves the practice.

That means looking for problems such as:

Diagnosis and procedure mismatches.

Documentation gaps.

Modifier problems.

Medical-necessity concerns.

Authorization inconsistencies.

Payer-specific requirements.

Potential duplicate claims.

Coding anomalies.

The exact rules will vary by specialty, payer and service.

That is precisely why a rigid checklist is not enough.

The system has to understand context.


Three Expert Lessons

Expert Lesson One: Think in Systems

Patient-safety leaders increasingly emphasize systems thinking.

That means resisting the temptation to reduce an event to:

“Someone made a mistake.”

People make mistakes.

Good systems anticipate that.

The question becomes:

What defenses were supposed to catch the mistake?

That same thinking belongs in revenue-cycle management.

If one employee enters incorrect information and the entire claim becomes vulnerable, the system has a weakness.

Do not simply retrain the employee.

Fix the defense.


Expert Lesson Two: More Alerts Do Not Equal More Safety

Healthcare technology has a strange addiction to alerts.

Alert.

Alert.

Alert.

Alert.

Eventually the physician develops a new clinical condition:

alert fatigue.

The same thing can happen in billing.

If your software flags 500 things, congratulations.

You have created 500 things for someone to ignore.

The better goal is high-value intervention.

Tell the team what matters.

Tell them why.

Tell them what action is available.

Then get out of the way.


Expert Lesson Three: Technology Works Best With Humans

The future should not be:

AI versus physicians.

It should be:

AI plus physicians.

Technology can process enormous amounts of information.

Humans understand nuance, context and consequences.

A good system knows when to automate.

A better system knows when to stop and ask for help.

That principle matters enormously in healthcare.


The Glenda Dorton Lesson

Think about what Glenda's family is asking for.

Not revenge.

Not a public spectacle.

Not punishment for its own sake.

They want an explanation.

They want accountability.

And most importantly:

They want it not to happen again.

That is the essence of quality improvement.

And it should be the essence of healthcare technology.

If the technology identifies an error but nobody learns from it, the system has failed twice.

First, it failed to prevent the problem.

Second, it failed to improve afterward.


The Most Dangerous Phrase in Healthcare

I would nominate:

“That's just how it works.”

We say it about billing.

We say it about prior authorization.

We say it about denials.

We say it about documentation.

We say it about administrative work.

We say it about physician burnout.

We say it about payer rules.

Eventually, dysfunction becomes tradition.

And tradition gets mistaken for necessity.

It isn't.


Five Questions Every Clinic Owner Should Ask

1. Where are our errors first created?

Not where they are discovered.

Where are they created?

Those are often different places.

2. Where are errors first detected?

If the answer is “after the payer denies the claim,” you have a problem.

3. How many people touch a claim?

Every handoff creates potential friction.

4. What information is repeatedly re-entered?

Repeated data entry is an invitation to inconsistency.

5. What could we know earlier?

That may be the most important question of all.


A Practical Step-by-Step Revenue-Cycle Audit

You do not need a $500,000 consulting project.

Start with ten claims.

Pick ten recent claims.

Follow each one from:

Registration → Encounter → Documentation → Coding → Claim → Clearinghouse → Payer → Payment

Write down every handoff.

Then ask:

Where did someone manually enter information?

Where did someone reinterpret information?

Where did someone copy information?

Where did someone correct information?

Where did someone wait?

Where did someone have to call someone else?

You will probably find more friction than expected.


Step Two: Find the Repeat Offenders

Look at your last 100 denials.

Do not simply count them.

Group them.

Eligibility.

Authorization.

Coding.

Documentation.

Medical necessity.

Modifier.

Payer policy.

Data entry.

Now ask:

Which three categories account for the largest share?

That is where you start.


Step Three: Follow the Problem Upstream

Suppose 30% of your denials involve documentation.

Do not immediately tell the billing department to work harder.

Ask:

Why is documentation incomplete?

Is the template confusing?

Is the physician unaware of a payer requirement?

Is the workflow too slow?

Is information captured in another system?

Is the problem specialty-specific?

The denial is the symptom.

Find the disease.


Step Four: Automate the Boring Stuff

Computers are very good at repetitive comparison.

Humans are good at judgment.

Use technology for things like:

matching

checking

flagging

sorting

prioritizing

Use humans for:

clinical judgment

complex exceptions

interpretation

communication

accountability

That division of labor makes much more sense than “AI replaces everyone.”


Step Five: Measure What You Prevented

This is where many practices make a mistake.

They measure:

How many claims did we submit?

How many denials did we work?

How much money did we collect?

Those are useful.

But add:

How many problems did we catch before submission?

That number tells you whether your system is becoming proactive.


Metrics That Actually Matter

Clean-Claim Rate

How often does the claim pass the first time?

Useful.

But incomplete.

Denial Rate

Important.

But even more important is why the claim was denied.

Days in A/R

A basic financial health indicator.

Rework Rate

How often must someone touch a claim again?

This is an underrated metric.

First-Pass Resolution

How often does the problem get resolved without multiple cycles?

Upstream Detection Rate

How many potential problems were identified before submission?

I believe this metric deserves much more attention.


The Billing Version of a Near Miss

Healthcare safety has a valuable concept:

near miss.

Something almost went wrong, but somebody caught it.

Revenue cycle should adopt the same mindset.

A claim that almost went out with a major error but was stopped is not a failure.

It is a success.

It means the system worked.

That is an important cultural change.

Instead of hiding errors, measure how effectively you catch them.


What Not to Do

Don't Fire Your Billing Company Tomorrow

Maybe the billing company is the problem.

Maybe it isn't.

Find the root cause first.

Don't Buy Five More Platforms

Technology fragmentation is already bad enough.

Don't Automate Everything

Some things require judgment.

Don't Trust AI Blindly

AI can be wrong.

Don't Blame the Physician Automatically

Physicians are often given incomplete or poorly designed workflows and then blamed for the resulting data.

Don't Measure Activity Instead of Outcomes

A busy billing department isn't necessarily an effective billing department.


A Little Humor About Healthcare Technology

We have built a remarkable healthcare ecosystem.

A physician can order a test from a computer.

The patient can receive a text message.

The insurance company can send an electronic authorization.

The EHR can create a beautiful note.

The clearinghouse can transmit a claim in milliseconds.

And then someone prints a spreadsheet and highlights a denial with a yellow marker.

Progress.

Sometimes healthcare innovation feels like installing Wi-Fi in a building and congratulating ourselves while the plumbing is still leaking.

The problem isn't that healthcare lacks technology.

The problem is that technology doesn't automatically create a reliable system.


The Legal and Compliance Reality

This is where the conversation gets serious.

Healthcare organizations need to understand that automation does not eliminate accountability.

If an AI system flags or influences a billing decision, the organization still needs appropriate controls.

That means thinking about:

Audit trails

Data security

Access controls

Coding accuracy

Documentation

Medical necessity

Payer requirements

Fraud and abuse

Human oversight

Vendor accountability

Data retention

A black-box system that cannot explain why it made a recommendation is a poor fit for high-stakes healthcare operations.

The more consequential the decision, the more important transparency becomes.


Ethical Considerations

There is an ethical difference between:

assisting a professional

and

quietly replacing professional judgment.

AI should make the important information easier to see.

It should not make accountability harder to understand.

A physician or billing professional should be able to ask:

What did the system see?

Why did it flag this?

What information did it use?

What should I review?

What happens if the recommendation is wrong?

Good healthcare AI should make those questions easier to answer.


Myth Buster

Myth: More automation means fewer errors.

Reality: Automation can accelerate errors if the underlying process is wrong.

Myth: The billing department owns the revenue cycle.

Reality: Revenue-cycle performance begins upstream with clinical documentation, registration, coding and workflow design.

Myth: A denial is a billing problem.

Reality: Many denials are symptoms of upstream information problems.

Myth: AI will replace medical billers.

Reality: The more likely near-term opportunity is AI-assisted validation, prioritization and workflow support.

Myth: Physicians don't need to understand billing.

Reality: Physicians do not need to become coders, but they benefit from understanding how documentation affects claims and revenue.

Myth: The most advanced AI will win.

Reality: The most useful AI may be the technology that solves a boring problem reliably.


Recent News: Why This Story Matters Right Now

The Nashville incident is still developing.

Current reporting says four joint-replacement patients were affected, and the hospital has now acknowledged a pharmacy error. The hospital says it has identified the cause and implemented corrective safeguards. Tennessee authorities are investigating.

CBS News reported that the hospital had self-reported the event to state regulators and launched an investigation.

The human story remains Glenda Dorton.

Her family says the 72-year-old went in for a knee replacement and emerged with devastating neurological injury. Her husband, Marvin Dorton, has remained at her bedside.

Her family is not asking the public to destroy someone's career.

They are asking the healthcare system to understand what happened.

That distinction is powerful.

It is also the foundation of modern patient safety.


The Bigger Healthcare Innovation Opportunity

Here is my prediction.

The next generation of healthcare technology will move from:

Automation

to

Validation

to

Prediction

to

Prevention

The first generation asked:

Can software do this task?

The second asked:

Can AI do this task?

The better question is:

Can the system recognize when something is about to go wrong?

That is a much more interesting problem.


The Future of Medical Billing May Look Less Like Billing

Imagine a system that understands:

The patient.

The encounter.

The documentation.

The diagnosis.

The procedure.

The payer.

The authorization.

The coding rules.

The historical patterns.

Then imagine that system quietly says:

“Something doesn't line up.”

Not:

“Error 47291.”

Not:

“Please consult the 87-page payer manual.”

Just:

“This claim may fail because the documentation does not clearly support the procedure under this payer's requirements. Review before submission.”

That is useful.

That is actionable.

And most importantly:

that is early.


Why OnnX Exists

This is the problem I am trying to solve with OnnX.

I believe small and medium-sized physician practices deserve better technology.

They should not need a massive health-system budget to gain visibility into their revenue cycle.

They should not need five vendors to understand why claims are failing.

They should not need physicians spending their evenings playing detective.

And they should not have to accept:

“That's just how billing works.”

My thesis is that clinical data quality, coding accuracy and revenue-cycle performance are connected.

If we improve the information before the claim is submitted, we have a better chance of improving everything downstream.


What I Would Do If I Owned a Clinic

I would start small.

I would take 100 recent claims.

I would identify the top five failure patterns.

I would trace each one upstream.

Then I would ask:

Could technology have caught this earlier?

If yes, automate it.

If no, redesign the workflow.

If it requires judgment, escalate it.

If nobody owns the problem, assign ownership.

Then measure the result.

Do that repeatedly.

That is how transformation actually happens.

Not with a giant PowerPoint.

Not with a $2 million AI strategy.

One problem at a time.


The Most Important Metric May Be Boring

Here's another contrarian thought.

The most valuable healthcare technology may not produce the most impressive demo.

It may produce fewer:

phone calls

corrections

denials

alerts

duplicate entries

manual reviews

after-hours messages

unnecessary meetings

Boring is underrated.

If your software makes the healthcare day boring in the best possible way, it may be doing something very important.


Three Questions for Physicians

If you're a physician owner, ask your team:

What keeps coming back?

What takes too long?

What do we keep fixing manually?

Those questions uncover more opportunities than asking:

“What AI should we buy?”


Three Questions for Healthcare Founders

If you're building health tech, ask yourself:

What painful problem am I actually solving?

Where does information become unreliable?

What happens when my AI is wrong?

If you cannot answer those questions, you probably aren't ready to automate the workflow.


Three Questions for Investors and Healthcare Leaders

Ask:

Does the technology reduce complexity?

Does it reduce human workload?

Does it improve decision quality?

If the answer to all three isn't yes, be careful.

A technology can have beautiful metrics and still make healthcare harder.


What Glenda's Story Leaves Us With

There is something haunting about the simplicity of this story.

Glenda Dorton wanted to fix her knee.

She was an avid gardener.

She had been putting off the surgery because she did not want the recovery period, according to her family.

She went to Nashville.

Her husband Marvin was beside her.

She expected to recover.

Instead, her family is now wondering how much of her previous life can be recovered.

That is not an abstract patient-safety statistic.

That is a person.

And perhaps that is exactly why the story matters.

Because every healthcare workflow eventually reaches a person.

Even a claim.


The Lesson for Every Physician

Do not ask only:

“Did we provide good care?”

Also ask:

“Did our system make good care easier or harder?”

Those are different questions.

A brilliant physician working inside a badly designed system can still encounter preventable failures.

A good billing team working with fragmented information can still produce denials.

A highly trained nurse can still miss an alert buried among 30 irrelevant alerts.

A talented coder can still be handed incomplete documentation.

Healthcare is a team sport.

But teams need good systems.


The Lesson for Every Clinic Owner

Your revenue cycle is not something that happens after medicine.

It is part of the operational anatomy of your practice.

Clinical information becomes financial information.

Documentation becomes coding.

Coding becomes a claim.

The claim becomes cash.

Or denial.

Or rework.

Or delay.

That means billing begins much earlier than most practices think.


The Lesson for Healthcare Founders

Don't build another tool that merely watches the problem.

Build something that helps prevent it.

Don't celebrate another dashboard.

Celebrate fewer unnecessary clicks.

Don't promise to replace humans.

Show how you make humans better.

And don't lead with AI.

Lead with the problem.

AI is the engine.

The patient's problem is the destination.


Final Thoughts: Healthcare Doesn't Need More Complexity

Glenda Dorton's story is painful.

But her family's response offers a powerful lesson.

They want answers.

They want accountability.

And they want the system to learn.

That is exactly what healthcare should do after failure.

Learn.

Not hide.

Not blame.

Not move on.

Learn.

The same philosophy should apply to medical billing.

When a claim fails, don't simply fix the claim.

Ask why.

When a denial repeats, don't simply work the denial.

Ask why.

When staff keep correcting the same problem, don't simply tell them to be more careful.

Ask why.

Because the goal is not to build a system where perfect people never make mistakes.

The goal is to build a system that catches imperfect human mistakes before they become expensive, harmful or irreversible.

That is what patient safety teaches us.

That is what good technology should teach us.

And that is what I believe the future of medical billing should look like.


Get Involved: Don't Just Read This. Challenge It.

Here is my question for physicians, clinic owners and healthcare leaders:

What is one recurring problem in your practice that everyone has accepted as “just the way healthcare works” even though it shouldn't be?

Is it:

Denials?

Prior authorization?

Documentation?

Coding?

Payer rules?

Administrative overload?

Too many systems?

Tell me in the comments.

I genuinely want to know.

Because your answer may be the problem another physician has been quietly struggling with for years.

Comment with the one workflow you would eliminate tomorrow if you had the power to do it.

Share this article with a physician, practice owner or healthcare leader who needs to rethink the difference between processing problems and preventing them.

And if you believe healthcare technology should make good people better rather than simply make broken processes faster, join the conversation.


Three Things Worth Acting On Today

First: Find the problem you keep fixing.

If you fix it every week, it probably deserves a system-level solution.

Second: Move detection upstream.

The earlier you catch an error, the easier it usually is to correct.

Third: Stop confusing more technology with better healthcare.

The best technology is often the technology that quietly removes work from someone's day.


Continue the Conversation

Healthcare innovation should not end with another software demo.

It should begin with a better question.

What could we prevent if we understood the workflow better?

For additional perspectives on healthcare operations, medical technology, medical billing, entrepreneurship and innovation, explore:

Website:
Dr. Daniel Cham

Podcast:
The Health Momentum Podcast on Spotify

YouTube:
Dr. Cham on YouTube

X:
Dr. Cham on X

Facebook:
Dr. Cham on Facebook

Knowledge is useful only when it changes what we do. Start learning. Question the old workflow. Build something better.


Free Resource

Check the Featured section of my LinkedIn profile for a free resource designed to help physicians and healthcare leaders think differently about healthcare operations and innovation.

No signup is required.

PS: The free resource is already waiting in Featured on LinkedIn.

If this article made you rethink how information moves through your practice, repost it.

One physician seeing this conversation today could help another practice avoid tomorrow's problem.


About the Author

Dr. Daniel Cham is a physician, healthcare consultant and medical-technology entrepreneur whose work focuses on the intersection of healthcare management, medical technology, clinical workflows and medical billing.

He is the founder of OnnX, an AI-powered medical billing SaaS focused on helping small and medium-sized physician practices improve billing accuracy, identify revenue-cycle problems earlier and reduce unnecessary administrative friction.

Dr. Cham's perspective is grounded in a simple idea:

Healthcare technology should solve real problems for real people—not simply add another layer of technology to an already complicated system.

Dr. Daniel Cham on LinkedIn


Disclaimer

This article is intended for general educational and informational purposes and should not be interpreted as medical, legal, coding, compliance, financial or professional advice. The Nashville medication-error investigation described above remains ongoing, and some clinical details have been reported differently by various sources. Readers should consult appropriately qualified professionals for guidance concerning their individual circumstances.


References

1. CBS News — Nashville hospital medication mix-up. Current national reporting describes four patients affected during joint-replacement procedures and the ongoing Tennessee investigation.

Read CBS News coverage

2. FOX 17 Nashville — Glenda Dorton's family story. Local reporting provides the most detailed account of Glenda Dorton, her husband Marvin Dorton, daughter-in-law Kristina Dorton and the family's desire for answers rather than individual blame.

Read FOX 17's report

3. WSMV Nashville — Hospital response and investigation. The local NBC affiliate reports on the hospital's response, the four affected patients and the state investigation.

Read WSMV's coverage


#Healthcare #MedicalBilling #PhysicianLeadership #HealthcareAI #MedicalAI #PatientSafety #HealthcareInnovation #RevenueCycleManagement #MedicalPracticeManagement #PhysicianEntrepreneur #HealthTech #HealthcareTechnology #ClinicalWorkflow #RevenueCycle #IndependentPhysicians #HealthcareManagement #AIinHealthcare #PhysicianOwnedPractice #HealthcareOperations #DigitalHealth

 

Saturday, August 22, 2026

Kourtney Martin Spent Her Career Caring for Patients. Then She Became One.

She knew how healthcare worked. Then she experienced it from the other side. What she learned should make every healthcare leader rethink innovation, physician time, and the work technology should actually remove.



“Kedar has spent his career helping healthcare organizations deliver better outcomes for the people they serve.” — Pamela DeCoste, Board Chair, Blue Shield of California, August 21, 2026


Kourtney B. Martin, CNM, knew exactly what was supposed to happen.

That was the problem.

She was not a first-time observer of pregnancy, labor or delivery.

She was a certified nurse midwife with Norton Women’s Care in Louisville, Kentucky.

She had spent years caring for women during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

She knew the terminology.

She knew the procedures.

She knew the warning signs.

She knew what clinicians were looking for.

She knew what questions patients were likely to ask.

She knew what could go wrong.

And then she became pregnant with her second child.

Suddenly, Kourtney Martin was not standing beside the bed.

She was in it.

Her colleague and friend, Kimberly S. Barnes, APRN, CNM, was there to help guide her.

So was a labor-and-delivery nurse named Devin, who was training to become a midwife.

Before Martin's induction, Devin decorated her room with streamers and the baby's name.

Later, when Martin became nervous during her epidural, Devin held her.

Think about that for a second.

No algorithm did it.

No dashboard did it.

No chatbot did it.

No billion-dollar healthcare platform did it.

A person held another person's hand.

And Martin remembered.

She later described how reassuring it was to have familiar people around her who she trusted to care for and protect her and her baby.

She also said that experiencing pregnancy, delivery and postpartum care from the patient's side made her more empathetic.

That is a beautiful story about childbirth.

But I think it is also a story about healthcare's biggest problem.

And it has surprisingly little to do with childbirth.

It has to do with attention.

Who gets it?

Who loses it?

Who protects it?

And who gets buried under everything else?

Because there is another person in healthcare who knows exactly what it feels like to be pulled away from the thing that matters most.

The physician.


What if the problem isn't physician burnout?

Before you disagree with me, hear me out.

We have spent years talking about physician burnout.

We have conferences about it.

Surveys about it.

Wellness programs about it.

Resilience workshops.

Mindfulness sessions.

Leadership initiatives.

Employee assistance programs.

Sometimes we even give doctors pizza.

Nothing against pizza.

But perhaps we have been asking the wrong question.

Maybe the question isn't:

“Why can't physicians handle the pressure?”

Maybe it is:

“Why have we designed so much work that physicians shouldn't have to do in the first place?”

That is a very different question.

And it changes the solution.

The American Medical Association reports that physician burnout has improved, with 41.9% of physicians reporting at least one symptom of burnout in 2025, down from 43.2% in 2024 and 48.2% in 2023.

That is genuinely good news.

But improvement does not mean the problem has disappeared.

Administrative work, EHR inefficiencies and staffing challenges remain important sources of physician stress.

So perhaps we should stop treating burnout as an individual defect.

Maybe some of it is simply workflow debt.

Healthcare has accumulated years of inefficient processes.

Physicians are paying the interest.


The physician's second job

Nobody really tells you about this part of becoming a physician.

You go to medical school.

You learn anatomy.

You learn physiology.

You learn pharmacology.

You learn diagnosis.

You learn procedures.

You learn how to manage uncertainty.

You learn how to sit with someone who has just received devastating news.

Then you discover another career waiting for you.

Claims analyst.

Coder.

Payer negotiator.

Prior-authorization specialist.

Documentation auditor.

Portal operator.

A/R investigator.

Sometimes amateur IT technician.

Occasionally unpaid collections manager.

It is quite the residency curriculum.

And somehow, "medical billing" wasn't on the MCAT.

Yet physicians can end up spending substantial time dealing with it.

That should bother us.

Not because billing is unimportant.

It is extremely important.

A medical practice cannot survive if it does not get paid.

But the physician is not necessarily the right person to perform every step required to get the practice paid.

That distinction matters.


The hidden cost of a denied claim

Let's say a claim gets denied.

On paper, it is a financial event.

$287 denied.

$1,400 denied.

$7,800 denied.

The revenue-cycle department sees a dollar amount.

But the real cost may be much larger.

Someone has to open the denial.

Someone has to understand why it happened.

Someone has to find the documentation.

Someone has to check the payer's rules.

Someone has to determine whether the claim needs correction or appeal.

Someone has to prepare the response.

Someone has to submit it.

Someone has to track it.

Someone has to follow up.

And sometimes the physician gets pulled into the middle.

Now that $287 denial is no longer $287.

It is:

$287 + staff time + physician time + rework + cognitive interruption + delay + frustration.

The spreadsheet sees revenue.

The human sees another interruption.

That is the hidden economy of administrative healthcare.


We measure dollars. We rarely measure attention.

This is one of the biggest blind spots in healthcare operations.

We measure:

Revenue.

A/R.

Denial rates.

Collection rates.

Visits.

Productivity.

Length of stay.

Readmissions.

But how often do we measure:

How many times did we interrupt the physician today?

How much time did the practice spend looking for information that already existed somewhere?

How many times did staff enter the same information into different systems?

How many tasks were created because another task was done incorrectly?

How many hours were spent fixing problems that should never have occurred?

And perhaps the most important question:

How much human attention did the workflow consume?

Attention is a healthcare resource.

We just don't put it on the balance sheet.


Kourtney Martin understood something about healthcare that dashboards cannot capture

When Martin became the patient, she already knew what was happening clinically.

But clinical knowledge didn't eliminate vulnerability.

She still needed reassurance.

She still needed communication.

She still needed trust.

She still needed someone she knew.

That tells us something important.

Healthcare is not merely an information-delivery system.

It is a relationship.

The patient is not a case.

The physician is not a productivity unit.

The nurse is not a staffing ratio.

The biller is not a labor expense.

These are human beings operating inside a complicated system.

And systems can either protect human attention or consume it.


Here is my contrarian take

I think healthcare has a technology problem.

But it is not the technology problem most people talk about.

We do not necessarily need more technology.

We need better choreography between people, technology and workflow.

Healthcare has accumulated tools like a person who keeps downloading productivity apps but never cleans the kitchen.

We have:

An EHR.

A clearinghouse.

A billing platform.

A payer portal.

A scheduling system.

A fax machine that somehow survived the digital revolution.

A spreadsheet.

Email.

Text messages.

Phone calls.

Passwords.

More passwords.

And another password to reset the password.

Then we put AI on top.

And call it innovation.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it is just digital clutter with a language model attached.

The real innovation is not adding another tool.

It is removing unnecessary steps.


Start with the work, not the AI

This is the part I wish more healthcare technology companies talked about.

Don't start with:

“Where can we use AI?”

Start with:

“Where are humans doing repetitive cognitive work that does not require human judgment?”

That question is much more useful.

For example:

A claim is rejected.

Does a human really need to manually determine the basic rejection category every time?

A payer sends a repetitive message.

Does someone need to read it from scratch?

A work queue contains hundreds of claims.

Does a manager need to manually determine which ones deserve attention first?

A denial follows a familiar pattern.

Does someone need to rediscover the same solution every week?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

But these are questions worth asking.


AI's best job may be boring

There is a lot of excitement about AI diagnosing rare diseases.

AI discovering drugs.

AI transforming medicine.

AI replacing entire departments.

Those stories get clicks.

But the most valuable AI in a medical practice may do something incredibly boring.

It might say:

“This claim looks like the last 37 claims that were denied for the same reason.”

That doesn't sound revolutionary.

Good.

Maybe healthcare needs fewer revolutionary demos and more boring things that actually work.

An AI system that quietly identifies a pattern before a human spends 20 minutes investigating it can create real value.

An AI system that prepares a denial for review can create real value.

An AI system that prioritizes A/R work can create real value.

An AI system that identifies missing information before submission can create real value.

The future may be less glamorous than the keynote speeches suggest.

And that's okay.


The real opportunity: cognitive offloading

We talk about outsourcing labor.

But AI's more interesting opportunity in healthcare may be cognitive offloading.

Not:

“Let the machine replace the person.”

But:

“Let the machine carry some of the mental load.”

That is different.

A physician should not have to remember every payer rule.

A biller should not have to manually rediscover every denial pattern.

A clinic manager should not have to monitor every workflow manually.

A nurse should not have to become an insurance detective.

The human still makes the important decision.

The system helps prepare the ground.

That is where I see responsible AI becoming genuinely useful.


The revenue cycle is a workflow, not a collection of departments

Here is the model I use:

Patient

Documentation

Coding

Claim

Payer

Denial

Appeal

Payment

A/R

Most organizations manage these as separate functions.

Patients don't experience them separately.

Neither does the money.

Neither does the physician.

A documentation problem can become a coding problem.

A coding problem can become a denial.

A denial becomes A/R.

A/R becomes staff work.

Staff work becomes operational cost.

And eventually someone asks:

“Why are our physicians spending so much time on administration?”

Because the workflow is connected.

We just happen to manage it in pieces.


The three questions I would ask every clinic owner

If I walked into a small medical practice tomorrow, I would not ask:

“What AI platform are you using?”

I'd ask:

1. Where are you losing money?

Not theoretically.

Show me the actual data.

2. Where are your people wasting time?

Not where they say they are busy.

Where are they repeatedly doing work that could be eliminated, simplified or automated?

3. Where does the physician get pulled into the workflow?

This one matters.

Every time a physician has to intervene in an administrative process, ask:

Why?

Sometimes the answer will be legitimate.

Sometimes it will be embarrassing.


Three experts. Three uncomfortable lessons.

Christine Sinsky, MD: Fix the system

Christine Sinsky, MD, has spent years studying physician work and burnout.

One of the most important ideas in this conversation is that burnout is not simply an individual resilience problem.

It is deeply influenced by the environment in which physicians work.

That should change how leaders respond.

If the workflow is broken, telling physicians to become more resilient is like telling someone to exercise harder because the office chair is broken.

It misses the point.

Fix the chair.

Then talk about exercise.


Kimberly S. Barnes, APRN, CNM: Trust matters

Barnes matters to this story because Martin chose her.

That choice says something.

When the caregiver becomes the patient, clinical competence is not the only thing that matters.

Trust matters.

Familiarity matters.

Knowing that someone has your back matters.

Healthcare organizations sometimes try to manufacture patient experience with surveys and scripts.

But trust is not manufactured by a script.

It is earned through relationships.


The lesson from Devin: Small acts are not small

Devin's role in Martin's story is easy to overlook.

A nurse decorated the room.

A nurse stayed close.

A nurse held her during a frightening moment.

None of this would make a hospital technology conference keynote.

But the patient remembered it.

That should make us uncomfortable.

Because healthcare sometimes measures what is easy to count and ignores what is easy to feel.

A human hand cannot be easily entered into a dashboard.

But a patient knows when it is there.


The statistics tell one story. Kourtney tells another.

The statistics tell us physician burnout is improving.

That's good.

The statistics also tell us administrative burden remains a significant issue.

That's important.

The story of Kourtney Martin tells us something the numbers cannot:

When you are vulnerable, the experience of care is personal.

Put those together and we get a different definition of healthcare innovation.

Not:

More technology.

Not:

More automation.

Not:

More data.

Instead:

Less unnecessary work between the human beings who need each other.

That is a much harder problem.

It is also a much more interesting one.


A practical framework: Eliminate before you automate

Here is the framework I would recommend:

1. Eliminate

Ask:

Does this task need to exist?

If the answer is no, stop doing it.

Congratulations.

You just built your first automation.

Without buying anything.

2. Simplify

If the task must exist, make it easier.

Remove unnecessary steps.

Reduce handoffs.

Standardize information.

3. Standardize

Create a predictable process.

AI works better when workflows are understandable.

Humans do too.

4. Automate

Only now should you ask what software can do.

5. Measure

Did it actually improve the workflow?

If not, change it.

Or kill it.

That last part is important.

Healthcare needs more permission to kill bad workflows.


Don't automate chaos

This may be the most important warning in this article.

AI can make a bad process faster.

It cannot automatically make the process good.

If your workflow requires six unnecessary steps, adding AI to step four does not solve the other five.

You have simply created a faster inefficient workflow.

That is why the sequence matters:

Eliminate → Simplify → Standardize → Automate → Measure.

Not:

Buy AI → announce AI → hope for ROI.


A 30-day experiment for your practice

You do not need a three-year transformation project.

Start with 30 days.

Days 1–7: Watch

Have staff document administrative interruptions.

Every time someone has to:

  • re-enter data
  • search for information
  • call a payer
  • check a portal
  • correct a claim
  • chase documentation
  • explain a denial
  • escalate something to the physician

Record it.

No judgment.

Just observe.

Days 8–14: Rank

Score each task on:

Frequency

Time

Frustration

Financial impact

The worst combination is high frequency + high time + high frustration.

Start there.

Days 15–21: Redesign

Ask:

Can we eliminate it?

Can we simplify it?

Can someone else do it?

Can we standardize it?

Can software handle part of it?

Days 22–30: Test

Automate one small part.

Keep a human review step.

Measure the outcome.

Then decide.

That is innovation without the theater.


What should you measure?

Forget vanity metrics.

Measure:

Denial rate

Clean claim rate

Days in A/R

First-pass resolution

Appeal success

Rework

Staff hours

Physician administrative hours

Time to resolution

Revenue recovered

And one metric I wish more healthcare companies used:

Human hours returned.

If your system saves 500 hours, where did those hours go?

Did physicians spend them with patients?

Did staff handle more meaningful work?

Did someone stop taking work home?

Did your practice increase capacity?

Did patients get faster answers?

If the answer is yes, now we're talking.


The AI safety question nobody should skip

Before automating a workflow, ask:

What happens when the system is wrong?

That question is more important than:

“How accurate is the AI?”

Why?

Because accuracy without context is meaningless.

A 99% accurate system can still cause serious problems if the 1% occurs in the wrong place.

So build:

Human review.

Escalation rules.

Audit trails.

Confidence thresholds.

Exception handling.

Monitoring.

Clear accountability.

AI should not become the new mysterious employee nobody knows how to supervise.


Legal and compliance considerations

Medical billing is not a playground for improvisation.

AI systems handling healthcare information need appropriate privacy and security safeguards.

Practices should consider:

HIPAA and protected health information

Business associate requirements where applicable

Data retention

Access controls

Auditability

Coding and billing compliance

Documentation requirements

Payer contracts and rules

Human accountability

Vendor agreements

Most importantly, never confuse:

“The AI suggested it”

with

“The practice is not responsible.”

Technology does not magically transfer accountability.

Healthcare organizations should obtain appropriate legal, compliance and security advice for their specific use case.


Ethical considerations

There is another question beyond compliance.

Should we automate this?

That is an ethical question.

Suppose automation saves the practice money.

Great.

But does it make the patient's experience worse?

Does it create barriers?

Does it unfairly reject claims?

Does it hide errors?

Does it make it harder for staff to challenge an incorrect recommendation?

Does it shift work onto patients?

Does it create a system that nobody can explain?

Efficiency is not automatically ethical.

A healthcare system can be extremely efficient at doing the wrong thing.

The goal is responsible efficiency.


What I think healthcare gets wrong about AI

We keep asking AI to do increasingly complicated things.

Maybe we should first ask it to do simpler things extremely well.

Find.

Classify.

Summarize.

Prioritize.

Recommend.

Prepare.

Route.

Monitor.

Then let a human decide.

That may sound less exciting.

But it is much closer to how trustworthy healthcare systems should evolve.


What OnnX is trying to build

This is the problem that led me to build OnnX.

I am not interested in putting an AI chatbot on top of an already complicated billing workflow and calling it transformation.

I am interested in something much more practical.

Can AI remove repetitive cognitive work from medical billing while keeping humans in control?

Consider a denied claim.

Instead of:

Denial → human searches → human interprets → human hunts for documentation → human decides → human prepares response

Imagine:

Denial → AI analyzes → AI identifies likely cause → AI retrieves relevant information → AI recommends action → human approves → workflow proceeds

That is the difference between an AI feature and an AI workflow.

One answers questions.

The other helps move work forward.


Why small and midsize practices matter

Large health systems can throw people at administrative problems.

Small practices cannot.

A five-physician practice cannot necessarily hire another department every time a payer creates another administrative requirement.

The physician becomes the safety net.

The office manager becomes the safety net.

The biller becomes the safety net.

Eventually, everyone becomes the safety net.

That is not a scalable operating model.

For smaller practices, workflow automation is not necessarily about replacing people.

It can be about making a small team capable of operating like a much larger one.

That is where AI could become economically meaningful.


But here is the uncomfortable part

Sometimes the answer is not AI.

I want to say that clearly as someone building an AI company.

If a process can be fixed with a policy change, fix the policy.

If delegation solves it, delegate it.

If training solves it, train people.

If the task should not exist, eliminate it.

If a simple rule handles it, use the rule.

Only use AI when AI actually adds value.

Healthcare does not need another company telling it that every problem requires artificial intelligence.

Sometimes the smartest algorithm is:

Stop doing that.


The future of healthcare AI may be surprisingly boring

I think the best healthcare AI may eventually become almost invisible.

It won't announce itself.

It won't necessarily have a flashy interface.

It will quietly notice:

“This looks familiar.”

“This information is missing.”

“This claim resembles previous denials.”

“This account needs attention.”

“This task can wait.”

“This one cannot.”

“This requires a human.”

And then it will get out of the way.

That is important.

Because the ultimate goal of healthcare technology should not be to make technology more visible.

It should make care more visible.


The patient should never have to know how complicated the back office is

This is one of my favorite tests.

Imagine a patient sitting in an exam room.

They should not have to care about:

The clearinghouse.

The payer portal.

The denial queue.

The coding edit.

The A/R aging report.

The workflow exception.

The billing system.

They just want to know:

What is wrong with me?

What do we do next?

Will I be okay?

That's it.

And physicians should have more time to answer those questions.


What if AI's greatest healthcare contribution is time?

We usually describe AI using capability.

What can it generate?

What can it predict?

What can it summarize?

What can it automate?

But maybe the most important metric is simpler:

What can it give back?

Five minutes.

Twenty minutes.

An hour.

An evening.

A weekend.

A little less cognitive noise.

A little more attention.

A little more patience.

A little more time to explain.

A little more time to listen.

A little more time to hold someone's hand.

That is not a small outcome.

That is healthcare.


The Kourtney Martin test

Here is the test I would use for any healthcare technology:

If Kourtney Martin were sitting in the exam room, would this technology make her experience better?

Not theoretically.

Actually.

Would the physician have more time?

Would the nurse have more attention?

Would the patient receive clearer communication?

Would unnecessary administrative work disappear?

Would the system make someone feel less alone?

If yes, keep exploring it.

If not, perhaps we are solving the wrong problem.


Three myths worth killing

Myth #1: More technology means better healthcare.

No.

Better workflow means better healthcare.

Technology is one possible ingredient.

Not the recipe.

Myth #2: AI's goal should be replacing humans.

No.

The better goal is replacing unnecessary human work.

Those are very different things.

Myth #3: Billing is separate from patient care.

Absolutely not.

Billing affects staffing.

Staffing affects capacity.

Capacity affects access.

Administrative burden affects physicians.

Physician time affects patient care.

Everything connects.


The biggest opportunity may be hiding in plain sight

Healthcare has spent enormous amounts of energy trying to improve the clinical encounter.

But what surrounds the clinical encounter?

A mountain of administrative work.

Before the patient enters:

Scheduling.

Eligibility.

Authorization.

Documentation.

After the patient leaves:

Coding.

Claims.

Denials.

Appeals.

A/R.

Follow-up.

The clinical encounter is only one part of the journey.

If we want truly human-centered healthcare, we have to redesign the entire journey.

That includes the back office.

Especially the back office.


A physician entrepreneur's confession

I will admit something.

When I first started thinking about healthcare AI, it was tempting to focus on the technology.

That's what entrepreneurs do.

We see a capability and immediately ask:

“What can we build?”

But healthcare forces you to ask a harder question:

“What should we build?”

And then an even harder one:

“Will anyone actually use it?”

That changed how I think about OnnX.

The goal is not to build something impressive.

The goal is to solve something painful.

There is a difference.


The best product may be the one nobody talks about

Imagine a clinic owner telling a friend:

“We bought this incredible AI platform.”

That's nice.

Now imagine saying:

“We don't spend three hours every Friday fixing the same billing problems anymore.”

That is better.

The second statement is not sexy.

It is useful.

And usefulness compounds.


What I would tell every physician starting a practice

Do not wait until your practice is overwhelmed to map your workflows.

Do it early.

Document who does what.

Measure where claims fail.

Track A/R.

Understand payer patterns.

Separate clinical judgment from administrative work.

Build escalation rules.

Standardize repetitive tasks.

And when technology can safely remove work, use it.

But keep asking:

Does this make the practice more human?

If the answer is no, rethink it.


What I would tell every clinic owner

Your billing workflow is not merely a finance function.

It is an operating system.

It affects:

Cash flow.

Staff workload.

Physician time.

Patient access.

Practice growth.

Retention.

Stress.

Treat it accordingly.

Do not wait for your A/R to become a crisis.

Do not wait for physicians to become exhausted.

Do not wait until your best employee quits because they spend every Friday afternoon fixing the same problem.

Measure the workflow now.


What I would tell healthcare innovators

Stop selling AI.

Start selling outcomes.

Don't tell a physician:

“Our model has impressive reasoning capabilities.”

Tell them:

“We reduced denial-review time by 40%.”

Don't say:

“We have an intelligent agent.”

Say:

“Your staff no longer has to manually review these 300 routine cases.”

Don't say:

“We use generative AI.”

Say:

“Your physician spends less time on administrative work.”

The technology is interesting.

The outcome is the product.


Final Thoughts: Give the caregiver back

Kourtney B. Martin knew how healthcare worked.

Then she became the patient.

And when she needed reassurance, what mattered was not another layer of technology.

It was another human being.

Kimberly S. Barnes was there.

Devin was there.

They gave Martin something healthcare cannot manufacture at scale:

presence.

That story should make every healthcare leader pause.

Because we are building increasingly intelligent systems while simultaneously asking whether physicians have enough time to be present with patients.

That is backwards.

The question isn't whether AI can make healthcare more technologically sophisticated.

It can.

The question is whether we will use it wisely.

Will we use AI to add another layer of complexity?

Or will we use it to remove complexity?

Will we automate people?

Or will we automate the work that prevents people from doing what only people can do?

Will we chase productivity?

Or will we protect attention?

I know which future I want to build.

Less clicking.

Less chasing.

Less rework.

Less administrative noise.

And more time for the work that brought most of us into healthcare in the first place.

Caring for people.


Get Involved

So here is my challenge to physicians and clinic owners:

If you could permanently eliminate ONE administrative task from your practice tomorrow, what would it be?

Don't give me the politically correct answer.

Give me the task that makes you mutter something under your breath when nobody is listening.

Tell me in the comments.

I want to know where the real friction is.

And if this perspective resonates with you, repost this article and send it to another physician, practice leader or healthcare innovator.

Maybe someone in your network is fighting the exact same workflow you are.

Maybe they have already solved it.

Either way, the conversation is worth having.

Question the workflow.

Protect human attention.

Use AI where it actually helps.

The future of healthcare does not need to be less human.

It needs to be less unnecessarily difficult for humans.


About the Author

Dr. Daniel Cham is a physician, medical consultant and healthcare entrepreneur whose work sits at the intersection of medical technology, healthcare management, medical billing and AI-powered workflow automation.

He is the founder of OnnX, an AI-powered medical billing SaaS focused on helping small and midsize medical practices reduce unnecessary administrative work and improve revenue-cycle workflows.

His perspective is simple:

Technology should make healthcare easier to practice, not harder.

Connect with Dr. Cham on LinkedIn to follow his work on healthcare operations, AI, medical billing and practical innovation.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/daniel-cham-md-669036285


Disclaimer

This article is intended for general educational and informational purposes. It does not constitute medical, legal, regulatory, compliance, financial or professional advice. Specific healthcare, billing, technology and compliance decisions should be evaluated with appropriately qualified professionals.


Continue the Conversation

Healthcare is moving quickly.

But the most useful ideas are often found in the less glamorous parts of medicine: the workflows, decisions, operational problems and everyday experiences that determine whether healthcare actually works.

Explore more perspectives on healthcare, medical practice, technology, billing, operations and innovation.

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Knowledge creates options. Curiosity creates better questions. Better questions create better healthcare.

Start there.


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References

Norton Healthcare — “From caregiver to patient: A nurse midwife’s own birth story.”

The August 21, 2026 story about Kourtney B. Martin provides the human-interest foundation for this article and describes her experience moving from caregiver to patient.

American Medical Association — Physician burnout data.

The AMA's 2026 reporting shows physician burnout declining to 41.9%, while significant system and administrative challenges remain.

American Medical Association — Prior authorization burden.

AMA survey findings illustrate the continuing administrative burden associated with payer requirements and physicians' skepticism that recent insurer reforms will meaningfully reduce the problem.


One Last Question

Maybe we have been measuring healthcare incorrectly.

We measure what gets billed.

What gets collected.

What gets documented.

What gets coded.

What gets denied.

What gets paid.

But perhaps we should also measure:

How much time did we give back?

How many minutes did a physician spend with a patient instead of a payer portal?

How many hours did a nurse spend caring instead of chasing paperwork?

How many evenings did a clinic owner get back?

How many interruptions disappeared?

How many moments of human connection became possible?

Those numbers may never fit neatly into a revenue-cycle dashboard.

But patients notice them.

Physicians notice them.

Families notice them.

And perhaps that is the point.

The best healthcare technology may not be the technology patients notice.

It may be the technology that quietly gives their caregivers enough time to notice them.

#HealthcareAI #MedicalBilling #HealthcareAutomation #PhysicianBurnout #AdministrativeBurden #RevenueCycleManagement #MedicalPracticeManagement #HealthcareInnovation #HealthTech #AIinHealthcare #PhysicianLeadership #ClinicOwners #HealthcareOperations #DigitalHealth #PatientExperience #HumanCenteredHealthcare #MedicalTechnology #PhysicianEntrepreneur #HealthcareLeadership #OnnX

 

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