On/Offcall: Physicians We'll See You at HLTH 2026

Offcall Team

Physicians, see you at HLTH 2026!

Big news: Offcall is co-hosting Physician AI at the Crossroads, an invitation-only breakfast at HLTH for physicians and health system leaders. Alongside Regard, Wildfire Partners, and MDCalc, our co-founder Dr. Graham Walker will moderate a candid conversation about what it really takes to bring AI into clinical practice: What’s actually working? What can we trust? And who’s buying?

Joining him on the panel is Dr. Francisco Alvarez (Regard), Dr. Shazia Siddique (MDCalc), Dr. John Dayton (Wildfire Partners), and Dr. Kenneth Trauner (The Permanente Medical Group, Inc.).

🗓️ Tuesday, November 17
⏰ 8:00–11:30 AM PT

Space is limited. RSVP here: https://luma.com/w91s97yl

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On/Offcall is the weekly dose of information and inspiration that every physician needs.

A Doctor on The Traitors Is Changing the Narrative Around Primary Care

This week on How I Doctor, Graham interviewed Dr. Jay Vinnedge, an Oklahoma City family physician, former Air Force flight medic, and now reality TV contestant, who opened The Little DPC, a direct primary care practice built around a simple idea: What if doctors could spend their time caring for patients instead of dealing with insurance companies? That means 90-minute visits with new patients, same-day text responses, and the flexibility to see someone with a sore throat that afternoon.

Now with his debut on NBC's The Traitors: New Blood, Jay aims to bring the conversation around direct primary care to a national audience. They discuss:

→ How the math around DPC can work with surprisingly few patients
→ How being unapologetically himself on TikTok became Jay’s best patient acquisition strategy
→ And what primary care would look like if we stopped building it around insurance

🎙️New How I Doctor episode out now

Most Talked About On Offcall

What Happens When a Pediatrician Takes On Congress - Dr. Annie Andrews on Turning Clinical Advocacy into Political Action
Revisit newly elected Senator Dr. Annie Andrews’ interview with Graham about getting more physicians elected to Congress (and weigh in here).

Meet DR GPT™: Dr. Harvey Castro on Patients, Robots, and Who Will Drive AI in Medicine

Dr. Harvey Castro on why physicians need to know when to trust AI, when to question it, and when to keep it out of the room entirely.

How Independent Physicians Are Using AI to Run Their Practices

Highlights from our recent AI webinar on using AI tools in independent practice, hosted with Dr. Hillary Lin, Dr. Barry Breaux, Dr. Michael Hobbs, and Ultralight’s Sunita Mohanty.

Plus, join our independent physicians lounge here!

Physician Spotlight: Meet Sahar Hashmi

Meet Dr. Sahar Hashmi, physician, AI executive and CEO of Magna GenAI Consulting in Boston.

1. Sahar, what is something another physician taught you that changed how you think about AI in medicine? My physician colleagues and mentors at Mass General Brigham taught me to see a patient's care as a system and to ask one question before ordering anything: "What problem are we solving for this patient?" and to consider the patient's whole ecosystem: their home, medications, co-morbidities, insurance, hospital room, support system and what they can afford. That systems thinking led me to my MIT Master's and PhD. Today, I ask hospitals the same question before they buy or build or partner with an AI tool. Most failed AI projects have skipped this question.

2. What do you want more physicians to understand about AI? AI isn't an IT problem. It shapes clinical decisions, and most tools are still being designed, tested, and prototyped. Physicians must be involved at every stage: designing, selecting, and implementing tools, setting the guardrails, and monitoring them after go-live. That only works if physicians and clinicians understand AI's benefits, its risks, and the hype around it. If physicians aren't in the room when it's chosen, they'll be in the room when it fails. Read more in my article “Who monitors the AI guardrails?” here.

3. What's something you've changed your mind about AI in healthcare? I used to compare AI tools and agents like ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot and assume the best AI model would win. I've tested AI tools from nearly every major developer, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and xAI. But after years of applying them in practice, building with them, and evaluating them for clients, I've realized the best-prepared hospital wins, not the best product. What matters is whether an AI agent fits the hospital's workflows, integrates with its infrastructure and can be governed by its AI team, and whether the hospital is ready to adopt it. An AI agent that excels at a Boston hospital can underperform in New York because the patients are different. AI readiness, not the race for the best product, is what determines success. Read more in my HIMSS newsletter interview on AI implementation challenges.

Read the full-length version here. Know someone else who should be featured? Reply or tag them and their company in the comments!

3 Things to Read This Week

Private equity replaced my anesthesia group. We can win. (KevinMD)
From Dr. Marco Fernandez: “Learning the history of our economics is as important as learning the history of a patient. Right now, too many of us are treating the symptoms without it.”

Sued If You Do, Sued If You Don’t: The AI Malpractice Trap (Medscape)
From Donavyn Coffey: “As AI in medicine proves increasingly useful and pervasive, its relationship to doctors becomes more complicated. AI detects patterns and weighs in with unexplained insight, but it’s still doctors who are left holding the bag in the event of a mistake.”

Doctors' offices are charging patients 10 times more by claiming to be hospitals (Washington Post)
“Banning hospitals from charging higher rates for the same routine service delivered in a non-hospital office setting would save Americans $500 billion over the next decade.”

Highlights From Our Community

Each week, we celebrate career milestones, launches, & other goings-on in the physician community. Have something to promote? Reply and we’ll feature you.

Follow his journey, Michael Cui
Dr. Michael Cui announced that he is building an independent primary care practice in public in Orange County! It opens in early 2027. Learn more and follow along here.

Congrats on the clinic opening, Sadaf Mustafa
Dr. Sadaf Mustafa announced the launch of NovoHealth Primary Care Clinic in Towson, Maryland, dedicated to advanced prevention, lifestyle transformation, and deeply personalized wellness. Learn more here.

And congrats on yet another clinic opening, Ramy Khalil
Dr. Ramy Khalil is officially opening Clinicly Direct Primary Care in Pittsburgh, a virtual-first DPC for adults, with an office on the way. From Dr. Khalil: “The most common critique of DPC in health reform circles is that it can’t scale… I think that ceiling will break, for 2 reasons:

1. Physicians want to go independent again, and
2. The tools that make independence possible are better than ever”

Learn more and follow his practice here.

Well said, Michael Albrecht
Dr. Michael Albrecht shared a heartfelt post about why outpatient healthcare needs to be more streamlined at almost every step of the journey. Read it here.

Listed to the podcast, Geoff Trenkle
Dr. Geoff Trenkle sat down with Dr. Sina Joorabchi on The Breathing Room to talk about how he took over an ENT practice in East LA with 4 employees, and has now managed to grow to 20 offices across Southern California, with 300+ team members. Listed to his business of medicine lessons here.

Here’s another podcast, Kedar Mate
Dr. Kedar Mate and Don Berwick announced the first episode of their new podcast “Mending Medicine" – “because it's time for us to turn our attention to the solutions to our chronic challenges in healthcare and to focus on the people who are behind those solutions.” Listen to the first episode here.

Still more podcasts, Yogin Patel and Demetrio Aguila
Dr. Demetrio Aguila interviewed William Fawcett VI on the direct care movement podcast about the growing interest in direct care amongst the next generation of physician leaders (h/t Matt Ohrt). Meanwhile, ApolloMD CEO Yogin Patel released the latest episode of Clinician Conversations with Sulieman Wazeerud-Din about how he took the reigns following the closing of two hospitals in the heart of Atlanta. Listen here.

Way to go on the launch, Amanda Wulfstat and Ron Strauss
Dr. Amanda Wulfstat and Dr. Ron Strauss announced the launch of Eclipse Health, a new concierge medical practice in San Francisco built around a simple belief: healthcare is better when physicians have the time to truly know their patients, understand their individual needs, and take a thoughtful, proactive approach to their long-term health. Learn more here!

Excellent video, Destiny Green
Dr. Destiny Green shared an amazing message for fellow women in medicine: “BE UNAPOLOGETICALLY AMBITIOUS ✨❤️🧠” Watch it here!

Congratulations on the career news, all
Dr. Eric Gibney is transitioning to a new executive leadership role at Piedmont Augusta as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Paige Bhansali is joining BAYADA Home Health Care as Chief of Staff. Dr. Robert Agnello has been promoted to Associate Professor of Family Medicine at Campbell University School of Osteopathic Medicine! Dr. Tim Savage has been promoted to Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School! Dr. Sasidhar Gunturu is starting a new position as President Bronx District Branch at American Psychiatric Association! Dr. Aqib Zehri is joining Legacy Health in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Christy King was recognized as the 2026 Program Director of the Year by the American Association of Colleges of Podiatric Medicine and the Council of Teaching Hospitals (h/t Dr. Ted O’Connell and Dr. Johanna Richey)

Still more career highlights, congrats all
Dr. Anil Sharma was named New Jersey’s Top Doctors 2026, for the 15th year running! Congratulate him here. Dr. Matthew Bunte celebrated the grand opening of a small independent cardiovascular medicine practice in Kansas City. Dr. Daniel Egan began as Professor and Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Dr. Jordan Lebovic started a new position as a Spine Surgeon at NYU Langone.

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