Season 1 • Episode 95

These Physicians Explain Why They'd Never Go Back to Being Employed

Sep 10, 2026

20:16

Allergy & Immunology Primary Care ENT / Hearing Children's Health

Episode Description

Something kept happening on Offcall that we didn’t plan for. Guest after guest, across totally different specialties, kept circling back to the same decision: walking away from employed medicine and building something of their own instead.

This Labor Day, instead of one long conversation, How I Doctor is pulling together the sharpest moments from five of those conversations, physicians in primary care, pediatrics, allergy, and ENT, who each found their own path to independence and never looked back.

Featured in This Episode

Dr. Farzad Mostashari, Former National Coordinator for Health IT and CEO of Aledade: on the economics behind why independent primary care is making a financial comeback, and why he calls employed physicians "cogs in a machine" built around someone else's goals.
Dr. Ari Brown, Pediatrician and founder of 411 Pediatrics: on what it takes to stay independent for over thirty years, and her stark warning that independent pediatric practice is now "on the extinction list."
Dr. Paulius Mui, Family medicine physician and founder of XPC Health: on walking away from full-time employed primary care to build a direct primary care practice where patients pay what they can afford.
Dr. Basil Kahwash, Allergist/immunologist and co-author of Offcall's Referral Manifesto: on the isolation that comes with independent practice, and his vision for a connected network that fixes it.
Dr. Bradley Block, Otolaryngologist and board member at ENT and Allergy Associates: on how a 170-partner, full-equity ownership model became too big and too democratic for private equity to buy.

Resources and Where to Find Our Guests