In this monologue, Kelly Alhooie argues that clinicians across all disciplines—MDs, NPs, PTs, OTs, chiropractors, nurse‑midwives, and others—must abandon the traditional "provider" identity and adopt a coaching model. She outlines three systemic problems: (1) the healthcare system forces brief, minute‑by‑minute, HIPAA‑driven one‑on‑one visits; (2) reimbursement is rapidly declining, with insurers like UnitedHealthcare generating massive profits while paying clinicians less; and (3) medical education neglects holistic topics such as nutrition, sleep, stress management, and hormone health, leaving providers ill‑prepared for patients’ current needs. Alhooie contends that coaching can alleviate burnout, expand the scope of care, and meet the growing demand for “doctor‑in‑pocket” services. She calls on every provider to rebrand themselves as coaches, acquire broader wellness knowledge, and redesign care delivery to be more patient‑centered and financially sustainable.
Chapters
You're not stuck in the system. You're not stuck burnt out. You're not stuck only having between 30 minutes to an hour long with your patients. Why are we sticking to what the system has taught us as providers? Why are we not opening the doors into coaching? Coaching is the way that is the gateway that's going to allow you to not be burnt out, be limited in what you can do, and allow you to effectively and efficiently treat any patient for any issues by being a coach instead of a provider. So why are we all stuck on the provider title that we all have, and why don't we get out and all become coaches? So this episode today is about why you should become a coach and why we really need to let go of the provider title. And I'm talking about all across the board. I'm talking about MDs, PTs, OTs, chiropractors, um, nurse— certified nurse midwives, NPs. I'm talking about every single person that is a provider, us letting go of that title and actually becoming a coach. And I'm going to start first with the system, the system that we are all trained in. No matter what kind of doctor you are, the system has taught us that we have to see patients one-on-one because of HIPAA and everything has to be by the minute. And as we realized, reimbursement on all fields has gone down, down, down, down. And we know UnitedHealthcare is making like $600— don't quote me on this, but like $624 billion or million dollars. I think it's billion, billion dollars this year in profit. Okay. As we know that reimbursement is going lower and lower, What are we going to do? To me, this is a wake-up call for every single provider out there that is listening to this. Wake up! Everything is shifting. Everyone wants a doctor in their pocket. They're tired of dealing with the old way through the insurance company. And us providers, we have to change. We have to change. We have to do things so differently than what they were taught in school. And in school, they taught us the way that of how to get reimbursed with— through insurance, and they taught us only how to effectively treat based on insurance. So if you're an MD, they taught you the medications that could potentially help these patients get over whatever issue they're having, but they did not teach you nutrition, sleep, stress management. They didn't teach you any of that to not get to the point where you need the medications. Right? If you're a nurse practitioner, they didn't teach you anything about hormones in school. Nothing. So now when everyone wants hormones help, these are all extra classes that people have taken to now be that practitioner in that, but no one was really taught how to handle female hormones. Mind blown.
