Physicians are the backbone of a healthcare landscape stretched to its limits. With a growing shortage of providers and increasing administrative burdens, it’s time to confront the dysfunction payers create. This session challenges practice leaders to rethink their payer relationships and stop following outdated norms. We will examine when and how to exit silent PPOs, reject managed Medicare contracts that erode margins, and demand Gold Card authorization waivers to eliminate unnecessary delays. Attendees will learn how to push back against homegrown payer fee schedules that lack transparency, and resist lower fee schedules by line of business or provider license types, such as NPPs. Physicians must define and dictate the terms under which they will continue to see insured patients without defaulting to concierge medicine. This session will equip attendees to advocate for fair compensation, reduce administrative friction, and support sustainable independent practice. Through real-world examples and tactical strategies, participants will leave with a blueprint for renegotiating contracts, asserting control over clinical workflows, and restoring balance in a system that has long favored payers over providers.

Do you feel defeated before you start the negotiation process? Do you have transparency data and still find it difficult to move the needle on rates and terms at the table with payers? Are you searching for some contracting kryptonite? Then this session is designed for you and other leaders who want to elevate their negotiation skills with practical, repeatable strategies used by real life practices to achieve fantastic outcomes. Through case studies, you will see how real organizations — including primary care practices (pediatrics and family medicine), clinics existing clinically integrated networks to direct contract, specialty groups with ambulatory surgery centers, Federally Qualified Health Centers, and behavioral health practices — achieved stronger outcomes in negotiations. Using the Listen, Solve and Change methodology, the session will highlight successful client approaches with a variety of payers in diverse markets. Attendees will leave with ready-to-use negotiation language, graphics, methodologies, and resources. You will also practice key techniques in small groups. The session will provide solid guidance that practices can use and integrate into the payer contracting strategies to improve outcomes.

The economics of the revenue cycle have shifted, and leaders must move beyond traditional metrics to a more holistic, data-driven approach to performance management. Rising costs, payer pressure, and the pivot to value-based care demand a new economic model for the revenue cycle — one that treats cost containment not as cutting, but as investing smarter. This session will move beyond surface-level KPIs to explore how next-generation benchmarking, Lean Six Sigma discipline, and artificial intelligence converge to create a new framework for financial performance. Attendees will learn how to calculate the true economic impact of inefficiencies, benchmark against high-performing peers with intelligence (not averages), and use predictive analytics to anticipate — not just react to — revenue challenges. Designed with an executive lens, this session connects frontline process improvements directly to operational and financial strategy. It reframes the revenue cycle as a strategic engine for growth, resilience, and payer leverage in a margin-compressed market, with cost containment as the discipline that turns efficiency into lasting financial advantage. 

Traditional revenue cycle automation can streamline tasks but often stops short of true transformation. The next frontier is agentic AI — autonomous, goal-driven systems that make decisions, act independently, and continuously improve outcomes. This session explores how agentic AI can reshape RCM into a proactive, self-optimizing function. Through real-world examples, we will examine its role in coding, prior authorization, denial prevention, and patient engagement, highlighting measurable gains in accuracy, speed, and financial performance. Attendees will learn how to distinguish agentic AI from traditional AI, as well as how to structure governance and workflows that balance autonomy with compliance and human oversight. The session will also address how to track ROI using metrics such as gross collection rate (GCR), days in A/R, and cost-to-collect.  

This intensive workshop is designed help you understand and apply payer-negotiated rate data to your financial and managed care strategy, and to use those insights to draft and implement a payer contracting strategy for your organization. The session provides an overview of the Transparency in Coverage (TiC) data set for payer-negotiated rates. Instructors will guide attendees through a step-by-step process to audit credentialing files, query meaningful data, and put that information to work in payer contract negotiations. Case studies will illustrate how to use the data from start to finish, along with ancillary applications for revenue cycle staff. From gathering relevant data and evaluating contracts to refining negotiation skills and establishing a contract performance monitoring system, this bootcamp offers tactical guidance essential for financial leaders and payer contracting professionals. Access to rate transparency data is an invaluable tool for medical groups that have never had visibility into this level of information. Examples highlighting successes and challenges will equip participants with tactics and tools to elevate their managed care contracting approach. Attendees will leave with a framework for using payer-negotiated rate data to inform managed care strategy, deploy the data effectively, and understand how high-performing contracting professionals put this information to work for their clients.

Is your revenue cycle under increased attack? Are your providers working harder and collecting less? Payers are increasingly using downcoding and other subtle tactics to reduce your revenue — often without practices realizing until it’s too late. Traditional canned reports can’t keep up. This session shows practice leaders how to build targeted emails, dashboards, and spreadsheets that help busy managers spot revenue leaks before they become financial floods. Attendees will explore practical strategies to track and respond to downcoding, denial trends, and other hidden threats to your practice’s finances. Through an interactive discussion and real-world examples from practices across the country, attendees will see how to identify, fix, and follow up on current challenges in revenue cycle management. They will leave with concrete ideas and tools to monitor the right indicators at the right time, and to respond proactively to today’s revenue cycle threats and opportunities.  

Many practices are considering (or are being mandated) to transition from fee-for-service (FFS) to full-risk contracts. These contracts allow providers to share in financial rewards by managing patient care effectively, but they also expose practices to downside risks. Unlike other value-based care (VBC) models, full-risk contracting rewards practices that can manage utilization and patient outcomes while penalizing those that cannot. This session offers a step-by-step roadmap for moving from FFS to full risk while protecting financial stability and elevating care. A well-run, full-risk practice allows the physicians to spend more time with patients and practice at the top of their license: spending time on diagnosis and treatment plans, and delegating tasks to others. Spending extra time helps improve the quality of life for the patient and reduces inappropriate and avoidable utilization. This includes unnecessary ED visits and hospital admissions through better management and preventive medicine, resulting in a better quality of life for the patient. Attendees will leave with a practice approach to assess their readiness, build the necessary capabilities, and execute a transition to full-risk contracting.

Enforcement agencies are not slowing down when it comes to investigations, settlements, and legal actions related to noncompliant coding and billing in medical practices. Using a case‐study approach, this session will highlight recent enforcement actions and the lessons they reveal across key risk areas in coding and/or billing. Where available, case studies will draw from court documents to shine a light on details not typically included in enforcement press releases or news coverage. Topics will include medical necessity, coding modifiers, E/M services, "incident‐to" scenarios, and more. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of current enforcement priorities and practical insights to strengthen this compliance programs and reduce exposure.

Your practice is the subject of a government audit. Now what? Audits and investigations are a fact of life for medical groups, but few leaders are fully prepared when the notice comes. Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial payers are expanding oversight, and even small coding errors, documentation gaps, or compliance missteps can quickly escalate into serious risk. The impact goes far beyond dollars. Financial penalties are significant, but reputational harm, regulatory scrutiny, and loss of trust can be just as damaging. How you respond — and how quickly you engage the right support — often determines whether the outcome is manageable or catastrophic. This session offers a candid discussion of the hard truths and critical lessons in responding to coding and regulatory issues. Attendees will gain insight into the types of audits most common in fee-for-service and government payment programs, the risks associated with each, and what investigators are really looking for. Participants will walk through a vignette that traces the response to an audit notice — from initial letter through risk mitigation — to help leaders be better prepared. In an interactive style format, the speakers will provide strategic and hands-on guidance for practice leaders.

With rising labor costs and burnout at an all-time high, leading revenue cycle teams requires both operational insight and people-first leadership. This session highlights staffing models, automation, and outsourcing options that enhance productivity while maintaining service quality. Attendees will explore proven techniques to improve morale, reduce turnover, and engage employees in performance improvement. The discussion will address how to align team KPIs with organizational strategy so that staff contributions directly support financial outcomes. Leaders will leave with actionable steps to build resilient, high-performing revenue cycle teams.