In this second episode of a four‑part series, host Matt of the Practice Profit System warns independent, cash‑based medical providers—physicians, nurse practitioners, med‑spa owners—about the escalating pressure from hospitals and insurers. He explains how large hospital groups are driving up insurance premiums (12‑18% increases) while simultaneously cutting reimbursement rates, a strategy he believes is designed to push independent practices out of the market. Matt frames this as a systemic “squeeze” that threatens practitioners’ financial stability and professional autonomy. He then outlines a three‑step roadmap to escape this pressure: (1) get paid first by shifting to a cash‑first model, (2) gain control over pricing to protect margins amid rising overhead, and (3) increase revenue from existing patients through upselling and price adjustments. Throughout, he emphasizes the importance of mastering business fundamentals—pricing strategy, margin management, and growth tactics—topics he promises to cover in depth in the upcoming Business Mastery Fellowship, a fall‑season training program. The episode is interspersed with promotional calls to action, including a free copy of his book “The Anatomy of a 7‑Figure Medical Practice” (paying only shipping) and links to his marketing site. The tone is conversational yet persuasive, mixing personal anecdotes (CrossFit, financial planner stories) with strong criticism of insurers and optimism about cash‑based practice models.
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Welcome to the Practice Profit System podcast. Do you own a cash-based practice? Are you looking to start one? Tired of working endless hours and still not making enough money? Want to fire your insurance company? Then you're gonna love our podcast. Each episode is full of insights and proven strategies to grow your practice to 7 figures and more, allowing you to take more time off, make more money, and no longer have to take insurance reimbursements. Plus, get a free copy of my book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical practice where I detail my entire journey to creating my own 7-figure practice. Just go to www.srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. You just pay $7.95 in shipping and handling, and you'll also get over $1,197 in free bonuses. That's www.srpmedicalmarketing.com/book. Now on to our show.
Hey everyone, it is Matt again with the Practice Profit System, and we're continuing our 4-part series on becoming insurance-free. This is part 2, the curse of rising insurance rates and decreasing reimbursement rates. Now, let's make no mistake about this. The big hospital groups, if you're an independent, they want to squeeze, squeeze you out. There is no secret about this anymore, and Quite frankly, I find it rather disgusting. That's the way capitalism works. But be that as it may, the reality is they want you out. They want to control you and they want to freeze you out. I hear this time and time again from my doctors who are still independent because one of the things they're doing is they're not aligning themselves with a hospital group per se at a very deep level, and they're finding that they're not getting the pick of the litter when it comes to appointments or to Like surgery time and things like that. So what I want to do in this podcast is I'm going to give you a little bit of a hint and roadmap of how to take back control of your life, your profession, your patients' care, and most importantly, your bank account. So let's go ahead and get started. Before I do that, I do want to remind you this is part of a bigger 4-part series that we're doing with regards to how to become insurance-free. If you have not had a chance to listen to the other, the prior episode, please go ahead and take a chance or take an opportunity to listen to it. One of the things that this is going to lead to is we are opening up our Business Mastery Fellowship. That's going to be our fall iteration. There'll be information coming out for this. So let's go ahead and dive in. Okay. So I'm going to tell you a little bit of a problem and I'm going to tell it with a story. And here's what's really interesting is, as many of you know, I like to work out. I do CrossFit on a regular basis. I do the lighter version of CrossFit because my body can't handle the intense versions these days anymore. But the reality is that there's a couple of people there who work as financial planners. And they were all lamenting after we got done sweating and working out about how their clients are beginning to call them up. Their elderly clients are beginning to call them up, and they're getting early notifications that their insurance rates are going to go up 18%. And you know, there's a couple of different seasons, by the way, of when insurance comes into play. At the time of this recording, I'm in July, so a lot of companies, they do rollovers in July or August. But anyway, people are starting to get notification that their insurance rates are going up. On average, 12 to 18%. Where do you think that money is going? Because I know it's not going to you. If you are taking an insurance— here's the flip side of this story. Later that day, I get a phone call from a prospect and they tell me that they're ready to start because they just found out that the insurance provider is going to cut their insurance premiums $1.25. This doctor said to me, I'm either going to shut my doors or I'm going to do cash, and I'm not done being a doctor. Okay, now if you're a nurse practitioner, naturopath, med spa owner, whatever, but you understand, as Bill Clinton likes to say, you feel their pain, and you realize how bad this really has become. You see, the problem is hospitals are banking on you giving up. In fact, they want you to give up. They want you to surrender and just say, I've had it, I'm done, I can't do this anymore, I need to sell off, I need to go ahead and I'll do my 5 years in the hospital, they'll pay me a lot more money, Life will be horrible because I'll have to do what they want me to do, but in 5 years maybe I can retire. And that's really what they're banking on, is they're banking on you giving up. They want you to give up. You know, I want to know where the money is going. If the insurance provider is now charging 18% more and your reimbursement rate is going down, where the hell is that money going? Because I know it isn't going to your pocket. I got a pretty good idea where it's going. It's going in administrators' pockets. Or, and/or in their cahoots with the insurance providers. But that's another topic for another day. All right? So the solution is, is I wanna create options for you. Okay? That's the key. I wanna create options for you and for your business so that you don't have to depend on them. Okay? The first solution is that you have to understand, I want you to get paid first. Okay? So your current model with insurance is that you put up all the money, you see the patient, the patient gives you a paltry little $20 copay, which doesn't even pay The freaking coffee that your team drinks throughout the day, and they want you to then wait 30, 60, 90 days for an office visit fee that's $47 to $97. Sometimes it's $120, a little bit higher, right? So you are at the tail end of getting paid, and they usually screw with what they're paying you, right? Because they can, okay? And so what happens is that in the— you can't do multiple procedures while they're there, so the patients have to keep coming back, so it eats up all your time. Now, I don't know this for a fact and I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but I am in this because I think they're doing that to you purposely. I think they're doing that so that your time is eaten up so that you don't have time to do some of these other things like learn about cash practices so that you can create the freedom that you want. Now, I don't know that for a fact but I got an inkling suspicion that is the case. Well, because quite frankly, that's what I would do if I were in their shoes. But again, another topic for another day. So there's power in getting paid first. When you do the cash business, when you start creating a cash practice and offering cash procedures, you get paid before anybody else, which— that's how really successful businesses do it. You see, if you want to take control of your life and take control of your patient's life, you have to start looking at how to get out. You have to escape insurance Alcatraz, if you will, okay? Because it's pretty clear where this is going to go. They're going to continue to squeeze you out so that you don't really have any options. That's really what they're trying to do, okay? So you have to create options. One, you have to get paid first, okay? Not last. This creates velocity in your money. 2, you have to be able to control your pricing. Right now, you don't control your pricing. So have your costs gone up in the last couple of years? Darn right they have. Right? Your utility costs, your medicine costs, all your costs have gone up. Probably your staffing costs have gone up. So you have to control your pricing in order to meet what's going on in the marketplace. Because if you can't control your pricing, then you really are nothing more than communism, okay? Or socialism. Pick one of the bad ones that you want to pick, okay? So if you don't control your pricing, then you can't control what you charge, you can't control the money that you're going to collect, and you can't control your margins. Because all businesses grow based on margins, not based on revenue. They grow based on margins. So how do you expand margin, right? Margin is more than profit, okay? I'll dive into that topic someday, you know, for those of you that want to dive into it. This is a topic that we go in pretty extensively in Business Mastery Fellowship when we talk about pricing and how to set your pricing so that you have appropriate margin to cover all of your other expenses. This is not stuff that they teach you anywhere else, folks. They're not teaching you this stuff in medical school. You're certainly not learning this and in the events that go on. I know because I've been to most of them and they want to spend time, and that's their choice, teaching you new procedures and all that. But the reality is, is if you want to make this work, you've got to learn the fundamentals of business. You have to master business just like you mastered how to become a doctor or anti-aging or surgery or whatever and did fellowships. You have to do the exact same thing with business. You have got to learn the mastery fundamentals and, and do go through fellowship in order to become successful. So, you're not controlling your price, you can't control your time, you can't control any of this, and most importantly, you can't control how much you sell to your existing patient base. And again, what you charge. Businesses only grow 3 ways: new customers, sell more to existing customers, charge more. That's it. That's the only way a business grows. And so, you have to follow the basic fundamentals. You violate the basic fundamentals of growth, your business will not grow. Okay? So again, I want to take this back. I want to talk to you about this one more time. The plan, the key for medical practice with the insurance companies and the hospitals is they're raising insurance rate, decreasing your reimbursement rate because they want to get you out, they want to squeeze you out and I want you to take back control of your life and your profession and your patients' care and your bank account. So what you have to do is you've got to understand that it's all about velocity of money. You've got to be paid first, you've got to be able to control what you charge and you've got to be able to sell more to your existing client base. Those are the keys to help— some more of the keys to breaking free. And becoming insurance-free. Alright, in our next episode, we're gonna dive into getting insured— becoming insurance-free is how to carve out time for non-insurance patients.
Gotta do it.
It's a big secret, and I'm gonna share it with you on our next one. So make sure you join us next time, and don't forget to be on the lookout for information about Business Mastery Fellowship that's gonna be coming up here in the very near future. We'll be releasing it in the fall. I wanna work with you. I wanna give you the freedom, the keys to the kingdom. Join us. Well, have a great day. Great day. Great time. Stay great, everybody. Carpe diem. We'll talk to you soon.
Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, take a moment and share it with your fellow medical professionals, or post a positive comment and rate it on wherever you just listened. Now don't forget, you can get a copy of my book, The Anatomy of a Seven-Figure Medical Practice, for free. Just pay $7.95 in shipping and handling, plus you'll get over $1,197 in free bonus material. Simply go to srpmedicalmarketing.com/free.
