Reading · Private Practice Matters

My wife and I are foodies…and we were before it was super cool to be a food…we’ve been watching Top Chef since season 1…and our infrequent travel revolves mostly around food. We rarely go through the drive-thru at home (with 8 soon to be 9 mouths to feed, this shouldn’t be a surprise!) in part so we can splurge when it’s just the two of us.

In NYC mo before COVID with frequent Top Chef guest judge, Eric Ripert

One thing that we’ve learned from watching Top Chef & enjoying higher-caliber restaurants: the staff family meal.

Picture this: the staff and dining team have been working all afternoon to prepare for evening service, and before it gets started, they all sit down together.

Chef & cooks prepare food for everyone and they share a moment to connect and talk about the evening’s dishes and specials offerings, etc. It helps every team member get on the same page, lets them know about any special things going on, and also connects them before the busyness of the evening begins.

We took a page from the restaurant industry and a lot of learnings around the team-based approach to healthcare and huddle each day. I’ve actually been doing huddles since I was in my larger fee-for-service practice, and I will continue for the rest of my days in practice.

Each morning, we run through the list of patients coming in. We say their names out loud and what they’re coming in for, which helps our team get on the same page. Sometimes it jogs a memory “Oh…they messaged last week that they are worried about asthma!”, and sometimes it helps us focus on the meta data that lives outside the chart…new dog, saw at the soccer field, job loss, etc etc.

Huddles also allow us to make sure that we have all the pieces in place before the patient arrives, whether it’s:

getting their insurance entered for vaccines
making sure they filled out the pre-visit form that we needed from them
reminding our staff to give them the water bottle they left at their last visit

Huddles take 10 minutes but give you back 45 minutes each day in less chaos, task switching, last minute fixes, and delays.

In today’s episode of the Private Practice Matters podcast, you can hear, in depth, what we cover in our daily huddle, why we do it, and how to get started yourself.

Also in this episode

No-shows are up, and it isn’t forgetfulness. An MGMA Stat poll this month found 32% of practices reporting higher no-show rates in 2026. The driver looks financial, not behavioral... average Marketplace deductibles rose 37%, to $3,786, and enrollment fell by millions of patients. I make the case that a no-show fee on someone’s first missed visit is the most expensive $50 you’ll ever collect, and I walk through what to do instead: move the cost estimate to scheduling, and build a wait list you can text.

Q&A: “We’re down 800 patients in Q1, 600 in Q2, and another 700 in Q3. Any ideas why, and what should we be doing?” Some of it is the same cost story. Some of it is telehealth, urgent care, and patients asking chat/claude first. What I’d do this month: put your staff’s downtime into running reports on who’s overdue and texting them a specific day and time, and stop leaving voicemails nobody returns.

Newsletter Sponsor: Novaferrum. The 2026 AAP Clinical Report has primary care docs buzzing about testing CBCs & ferritins (appropriately so!) and explicitly flags palatability as a real barrier to adherence Several studies support that iron polysaccharide complexes may be better tolerated for some children.

The relevant data point is the BESTIRON trial (Powers et al., JAMA 2017;317(22)), a randomized comparison of ferrous sulfate vs. polysaccharide iron complex (NovaFerrum) in kids with iron-deficiency anemia.

Both groups improved (hemoglobin 7.7 → 11.1 g/dL at goal), but adherence diverged:

94% of NovaFerrum doses were successfully taken vs. 82% for ferrous sulfate (P=.009), with significantly less reported difficulty administering the medication at weeks 6, 8, and 10.

If you get one chance to get it right (not trying 5 different forms of iron),

NovaFerrum is a great option to keep in mind, and cost is comparable, too!

p.s. they’ve got iron supplements for adults, too!

Checkout Novaferrum

The article: “About 1 in 3 medical groups see higher no-shows in 2026 as patients face higher costs,” MGMA Stat, August 2026

Have a question for a future episode?