Ben White

APRIL 18, 2024

It’s recruitment season, the radiology job market is hot, and there’s a lot of corporate noise. I’m thinking of maybe starting the world’s smallest radiology job board right here, open exclusively to a limited handful of 100% independent private practices. If your group is interested in advertising on this site (and also therefore supporting my writing), email me at ben@benwhite.com.

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Private Practice Radiology 130

Ben White

APRIL 8, 2024

Incredible story briefly detailed in NYT’s “ Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack? ” by Kevin Roose: In the cybersecurity world, a database engineer inadvertently finding a backdoor in a core Linux feature is a little like a bakery worker who smells a freshly baked loaf of bread, senses something is off and correctly deduces that someone has tampered with the entire global yeas t supply.

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Ben White

APRIL 4, 2024

In Show Your Work , Austin Kleon argues “the best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.” That’s what I’ve been doing since 2009. One downside of Showing Your Work is when the showing of the work is the only work you do.

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IT Radiology 113

Ben White

MARCH 25, 2024

From last year’s “ Nutrition Science’s Most Preposterous Result ” by David Merritt Johns in The Atlantic (“Studies show a mysterious health benefit to ice cream. Scientists don’t want to talk about it.”): In 2004, the English epidemiologist Michael Marmot wrote, “Scientific findings do not fall on blank minds that get made up as a result.

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Public Health IT 162

Ben White

MARCH 17, 2024

Should New Residents Worry about Efficiency and Ergonomics? Yes. I don’t think it’s ever too early to start thinking deliberately about what makes you better and more efficient in your job or able to act more sustainably. If anything, spending more time on workflow and ergonomics early on in your career is an investment in yourself. As a resident, I just used whatever was plugged into the workstation I sat at.

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Ben White

MARCH 11, 2024

I got an underdesk elliptical a couple of weeks ago…I think maybe it’s awesome and wish I had gotten one a long time ago. I’m honestly a little surprised I can pedal while thinking. I tried a few, and this is the one I landed on: very stable, pretty cheap, reasonably quiet. The post Underdesk Ellipticals first appeared on Ben White.

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IT 130

Ben White

MARCH 8, 2024

The US government–specifically the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Trade Commission–is asking for public input about consolidation in healthcare. A summary quote from FTC Chair Lina Khan from an article in the WSJ : FTC Chair Lina Khan said that while some private-equity investment could be beneficial, too many buyout firms focus on profit to the detriment of medical care.

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Ben White

MARCH 6, 2024

When you first get into practice and really want to make a good early impression, you’re going to make some mistakes, and some of them are going to be pretty boneheaded. Everyone has holes in their knowledge, and there are almost certainly things that you should actually know that somehow don’t. Depending on your practice–and how often people see your name–it’s possible you may even burn a bridge or two with an experienced (or headstrong) clinician when you miss some key finding or r

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Clinic IT Imaging Radiology 162

Ben White

MARCH 4, 2024

Private Equity came for my wife’s psychiatric private practice EHR, Luminello. Luminello sold to SimplePractice, which is owned by EngageSmart, which is owned by Vista Equity Partners Management. From the press release : “Both SimplePractice and Luminello were founded by clinicians looking to simplify the business of running an independent solo or small group mental health practice,” said Ken Braslow, MD, Founder, Luminello.

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Ben White

MARCH 3, 2024

In which we have the nonphysician CEO of the largest radiology company/practice in the country—one that employs 10% of the workforce, just received $720 million in rescue funding , and is valued at several billion dollars— taking the time to troll an individual radiologist on X (née Twitter): Clearly, a man delighting in his bailout. The post Post-bailout Troll-break first appeared on Ben White.

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Radiologist Radiology 130

Ben White

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

They may not know how to run a radiology business, but they inarguably understand how to play the finance game: Radiology Partners completed its “ comprehensive set of financing transactions to strengthen its financial position.” In doing so, they ended up raising $720 million in preferred equity. They successfully used the promise of a substantial equity raise to get their debtholders to refinance, then used the promise of successful refinancing to further raise an additional ~$400 million.

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Radiology Radiologist IT 173

Ben White

FEBRUARY 19, 2024

I’m running low on my stash of Cometeer coffee. If you’re interested, you can get $20 off your first order and help subsidize my terrible caffeine addiction. (Full review here. Not an ad, but I do like cheaper coffee.) The post Coffee Me, Please first appeared on Ben White.

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Ben White

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Another wide-ranging radiology conversation, this time for an episode with the resident-run radiology podcast, Clinically Correlate. The post Clinically Correlate first appeared on Ben White.

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Clinic Radiology 173

Ben White

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

The gaming company Valve started in 1996, became initially successful with the award-winning game Half-Life, even more famous for the early multiplayer mods/games Team Fortress and Counter-Strike, expanded to change videogame distribution with the Steam store/platform, made the innovative/beloved genre-bending puzzle shooter Portal, and even recently released the powerful handheld gaming device, the Steam Deck.

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IT Healthcare Healthcare Communication 189

Ben White

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

A little over a year ago, I found Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals to be one of the most excerpt-able books I’d read in a while. In it, Burkeman describes cosmic insignificance theory , the perhaps counterintuitive argument that I would summarize as, “You really don’t matter very much in the grand scheme of things, so stop getting so worked up.” You could consider the aspirational approach to be a form of happy nihilism.

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IT 278

Ben White

JANUARY 31, 2024

For those with an extra ~50 minutes in their lives, Daniel Arnold and I had a wide-ranging conversation on the newest episode of the Radiology Report podcast. The post The Radiology Report Podcast first appeared on Ben White.

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Radiology 130

Ben White

JANUARY 29, 2024

Fresh off the press in AJNR : Lower [neuroradiology] shift volumes yielded significantly lower error rates. The lowest error rates were observed with shift volumes that were limited to 19–26 [CT/MRI] studies. Error rates at shift volumes between 67–90 studies were 226% higher, compared with the error rate at shift volumes of ≤ 19 studies. I wonder, are there any places in the world routinely reading ~20 cases per shift?

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MRI Radiology 130

Ben White

JANUARY 29, 2024

Radiology Partners is in the news more (especially now ), but here’s an interesting compare/contrast from S&P back in March 2023 looking at RP vs US Radiology (free account required). From that, an interesting chart for a bird’s eye view: Note: this chart is almost a year old and predates a lot of recent developments including RP’s proposed recent restructuring and USRS’s launching of its outpatient teleradiology practice Connexia.

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Ben White

JANUARY 28, 2024

There’s a Derek Sivers quote about business in Anything You Want that I think applies well to healthcare. I’ve replaced “customer” with patient”: Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your patients. Make every decision — even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone — according to what’s best for your patients.

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Ben White

JANUARY 26, 2024

Last week, Radiology Partners released an announcement that it was “commencing a comprehensive set of financing transactions to strengthen its financial position.” Setting the Stage Going into 2024, RP was already cashflow negative (i.e. losing money) to say nothing of the massive debt payments due this year and next. For a reminder of what was coming, recall this slide: But it’s more than that: In addition to having no ability to pay these loans back, RP told lenders they̵

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Radiology Radiologist IT Hospital 321

Ben White

JANUARY 22, 2024

As you might recall, UnitedHealthcare sued Radiology Partners in April 2023 for an alleged pass-through billing scheme during an ongoing arbitration process about underpayment initiated by RP’s subsidiary group Singleton Associates in April 202 2. RP called shenanigans. The judge made them fold that complaint into the ongoing arbitration process, in which there are currently three phases: Phase I: Determine which contract is active and should be used to determine charges: the original very

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Radiology Insurance IT Healthcare 162

Ben White

JANUARY 16, 2024

Steve Jobs, as collected in Make Something Great : There’s a lot of management techniques. I’m sure you study a lot of management techniques. When I was younger, it was management by objective. It’s all a crock. They’re all after-the-fact management techniques: “You’ve failed, and I know that because we are going out of business tomorrow.” All after the fact.

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IT 173

Ben White

JANUARY 15, 2024

C.S. Lewis (of Narnia fame) on peer learning: It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can. The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago he has forgotten. I’ve always been a big proponent of peer teaching in medicine.

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Ben White

JANUARY 12, 2024

Excellent piece on Prenuvo’s whole body scans by Dr. Dhruv Khullar in The New Yorker: Doctors sometimes use a barnyard analogy to talk about the vast differences between cancers. A tumor can be a turtle, a bird, or a rabbit, depending on its speed and ability to escape; the goal of screening and treatment is to fence the cancer in. Turtles move so slowly that, fence or no, they’ll never make it out.

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Ben White

JANUARY 10, 2024

The American Dialect Society chose their 2023 word of the year : enshittificati o n. From its coiner, Cory Doctorow : Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

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IT 278

Ben White

JANUARY 9, 2024

The Zelotes C18 (aka TRELC Gaming Mouse with 5D Rocker aka ZLOT Vertical Mouse) is a solid very inexpensive productivity and ergonomics upgrade. If you’ve never used a mouse other than whatever’s plugged into the computer already, this currently sells for just $29. It’s probably the best way to trial a vertical mouse for radiology without breaking the bank.

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PACS Radiology IT Hospital 147

Ben White

JANUARY 8, 2024

Long but good read: “ The pharma industry from Paul Janssen to today: why drugs got harder to develop and what we can do about it ” by Alex Telford. The post From Haldol to Now first appeared on Ben White.

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IT 130

Ben White

JANUARY 5, 2024

A brief and hopefully final private equity in radiology post for now. I assure you no one starts a blog during their first year of medical school in 2009 and says, one day I hope to p**s on organized medicine and large corporations as a hobby forever. With that said… § The ACR runs a large and presumably quite profitable job forum. (I believe they outsource its management to a third-party company, but it’s on their website, and their branding is all over it.

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Private Practice Radiology Hospital Public Health 182

Ben White

JANUARY 4, 2024

From “ How to Do Great Work ” by Paul Graham: Schools also give you a misleading impression of what work is like. In school they tell you what the problems are, and they’re almost always soluble using no more than you’ve been taught so far. In real life you have to figure out what the problems are, and you often don’t know if they’re soluble at all.

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IT 130

Ben White

JANUARY 3, 2024

From “ The Bitter Lesson ” by Rich Sutton: In speech recognition, there was an early competition, sponsored by DARPA, in the 1970s. Entrants included a host of special methods that took advantage of human knowledge—knowledge of words, of phonemes, of the human vocal tract, etc. On the other side were newer methods that were more statistical in nature and did much more computation, based on hidden Markov models (HMMs).

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Ben White

JANUARY 1, 2024

In addition to being New Year’s, this site turned 15 years old (!) today. It contains hundreds of posts, over a half million words, and oodles of my time. Thanks for reading! The post Happy Birthday to Whatever This Is first appeared on Ben White.

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Ben White

DECEMBER 30, 2023

2023 is the tenth year of sharing my reading list. (The blog is also turning 15(!). I am…aging. Here are the prior years: 2022 , 2021 , 2020 , 2019 , 2018 , 2017 , 2016 , 2015 , and 2014. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-ck by Mark Manson (I read Will last year, which Manson co-wrote and which was interesting if a bit ego-driven ((and falls a bit flatter in hindsight after the Oscars)), but then heard Manson on the Tim Ferriss podcast and thought I would revisit this original extreme

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IT Education 162

Ben White

DECEMBER 29, 2023

My crystal ball is as cloudy as ever. Earlier this month I wrote about Radiology Partners loaning a group money to help shore up radiologist compensation. That happened, but I was also wrong in my estimation of the likelihood of repayment: it turns out RP may be getting some of that money back after all. The ultimate outcome is still up in the air, but I’ve addended my previous post with an update.

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Radiologist Radiology IT 130

Ben White

DECEMBER 28, 2023

From now until January 4th, you’ll the White Coat Investor’s Continuing Financial Education 2022 course for free with the purchase of another course. Check out the bundles here (a very reasonable way to spend some unused CME funds before they expire if you’re on a deadline). That’s an affiliate link, so using it if it meets your educational needs helps support my writing (in which case, thank you).

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Ben White

DECEMBER 26, 2023

From “ Serious Medical Errors Rose After Private Equity Firms Bought Hospitals ,” reported by the NYT: The study , published in JAMA on Tuesday, found that, in the three years after a private equity fund bought a hospital, adverse events including surgical infections and bed sores rose by 25 percent among Medicare patients when compared with similar hospitals that were not bought by such investors.

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Ben White

DECEMBER 19, 2023

In honor of the late great Charlie Munger, Stripe Press has his popular book (mental models, decision-making, stuff like this ) available for free online in both a well-formatted browser-based ebook and audiobook formats: Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger The post Poor Charlie’s Almanack first appeared on Ben White.

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Ben White

DECEMBER 18, 2023

This month credit agency Moody’s downgraded Radiology Partners again (surprising exactly no one): the first (and smallest) of its large debt obligations is due in 2024, they currently owe 10x their earnings, and they can only service these debt obligations through refinancing, which is challenging in the current market even before you consider the potentially tenous state of RP’s acquired practices when they reach their 5-year vesting window.

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