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A curbside consult takes about 30 minutes, leaves no record and never reaches a billing system. In this episode of The Connected Practice, Dr. Kevin Halow, MD, MBA, FACS, adds up what those unscheduled calls cost independent specialists each year.

Dr. Halow starts with a call he took on a day he was not on call, then does the math with conservative assumptions: 15 hours a week, 40 weeks a year and $150 an hour. His estimate comes to 600 hours and about $90,000 a year, before counting what each interruption does to the rest of the day.

He explains why the gap sits in the infrastructure. Phone calls, personal texts and consumer email leave no record, map to no billing code and have both physicians absorbing the time. Then he walks through what a secure, documented consult looks like, and how a documented consult can map to CPT codes 99446 to 99449 and 99451 to 99452 when payer requirements are met.

Full transcript and related reading: https://cliniciancore.com/podcasts/curbside-consult-invisible-tax-specialists/
Join the network: https://cliniciancore.com

Host: Dr. Kevin Halow, MD, MBA, FACS, co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of ClinicianCore.

About the ClinicianCore Podcast

Hosted by Dr. Kevin Halow, the ClinicianCore Podcast explores unified clinical communication, physician burnout reduction, HIPAA-compliant collaboration, and the real impact of AI in healthcare.

New episodes are released every Monday at 1 PM EST.

If you’re a healthcare leader, physician, administrator, or innovator committed to improving clinical efficiency and restoring clarity to care delivery, this podcast is for you.

Follow or subscribe on your preferred platform so you never miss an episode.

Learn more about ClinicianCore and our mission to strengthen clinician collaboration at:
https://cliniciancore.com/

Connect with Dr. Kevin Halow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-halow-md/

Connect with Us

Referrals leave patients waiting for months while the referring physician loses sight of the case. In this episode, Dr. Kevin Halow explains how e-consults give physicians specialist input without a patient visit, and why both physicians can bill for that work.

In this episode:
• Why an e-consult (interprofessional consultation) is not telehealth, and why that distinction matters for billing
• CPT 99452 for the requesting physician (16 to 30 minutes of preparation)
• CPT 99451 for the consultant's written report (5 minutes or more), and how it differs from telephonic codes 99446 to 99449
• The 2025 CMS behavioral health codes G0546 to G0551 for psychologists, clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, and mental health counselors
• Worked examples in dermatology and behavioral health
• The documentation auditors expect: patient consent, time for each clinician, a written assessment, and a permanent chart record

See how HCC Consult Core documents e-consults: https://cliniciancore.com/platform/hcc-consult-core/

About the ClinicianCore Podcast

Hosted by Dr. Kevin Halow, the ClinicianCore Podcast explores unified clinical communication, physician burnout reduction, HIPAA-compliant collaboration, and the real impact of AI in healthcare.

New episodes are released every Monday at 1 PM EST.

If you’re a healthcare leader, physician, administrator, or innovator committed to improving clinical efficiency and restoring clarity to care delivery, this podcast is for you.

Follow or subscribe on your preferred platform so you never miss an episode.

Learn more about ClinicianCore and our mission to strengthen clinician collaboration at:
https://cliniciancore.com/

Connect with Dr. Kevin Halow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-halow-md/

Connect with Us

Every knock on the exam room door costs more than the ten seconds it takes to answer it. On this episode of The Connected Practice, Dr. Kevin Halow breaks down why routine clinical interruptions, prescription questions, scheduling asks, quick clarifications, are quietly restructuring the physician workday and driving burnout.

Dr. Halow walks through what happens cognitively each time a physician is pulled out of a chart or a clinical decision, why that reset, not the interruption itself, is the real cost, and how it shows up later as after-hours charting. He also outlines a different way to structure clinic communication: separating front desk and phone duties, replacing verbal interruptions with a structured digital queue, and giving physicians a private space to consult with peers instead of working every decision alone.

If your practice is trying to reduce burnout, improve retention, or get physicians out of the kitchen-table charting habit, this episode is where to start.

About the ClinicianCore Podcast

Hosted by Dr. Kevin Halow, the ClinicianCore Podcast explores unified clinical communication, physician burnout reduction, HIPAA-compliant collaboration, and the real impact of AI in healthcare.

New episodes are released every Monday at 1 PM EST.

If you’re a healthcare leader, physician, administrator, or innovator committed to improving clinical efficiency and restoring clarity to care delivery, this podcast is for you.

Follow or subscribe on your preferred platform so you never miss an episode.

Learn more about ClinicianCore and our mission to strengthen clinician collaboration at:
https://cliniciancore.com/

Connect with Dr. Kevin Halow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-halow-md/

Connect with Us

Across independent physician practices, most referrals and consults still travel by fax, and nearly half never turn into a scheduled visit. In this episode, Dr. Kevin Halow, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of ClinicianCore, breaks down why: not a technology gap, but an architecture problem. Most EHR systems are built to work inside one organization and can't talk to another practice's system, so staff default to the fax machine.

Dr. Halow introduces the trusted entity model: a secure, identity-verified connection between two practices that replaces the fax number with an authenticated, permission-based channel. He walks through what happens when a referral breaks down, the cost of the referral black hole in staff time and diagnostic waste, and how a documented, audited handoff changes referral completion rates and liability exposure for independent practices.

About the ClinicianCore Podcast

Hosted by Dr. Kevin Halow, the ClinicianCore Podcast explores unified clinical communication, physician burnout reduction, HIPAA-compliant collaboration, and the real impact of AI in healthcare.

New episodes are released every Monday at 1 PM EST.

If you’re a healthcare leader, physician, administrator, or innovator committed to improving clinical efficiency and restoring clarity to care delivery, this podcast is for you.

Follow or subscribe on your preferred platform so you never miss an episode.

Learn more about ClinicianCore and our mission to strengthen clinician collaboration at:
https://cliniciancore.com/

Connect with Dr. Kevin Halow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-halow-md/

Connect with Us

Nevada ranks 45th in the country for physicians per capita and 48th for primary care, but the deeper problem isn't headcount, it's fragmentation. In this episode, Dr. Kevin Halow draws on conversations across five Nevada hospitals and dozens of independent practices to trace how physicians gained autonomy but lost the informal referral networks, hallway consults, and peer support that once came built into hospital-based practice.

Covered in this episode:

• Why Nevada needs 2,300 more physicians to match the national average, and why all 17 counties carry a federal shortage designation
• The residency funding gap that trains Nevada's doctors, then loses them to other states
• Why only 42% of physicians remain in physician-owned private practice, down from 60% a decade ago
• Administrative burden as the leading driver of physician burnout, ahead of clinical workload
• Why 73% of physicians still feel stigma around seeking mental health support
• What connected infrastructure looks like when informal relationships stop scaling

About the ClinicianCore Podcast

Hosted by Dr. Kevin Halow, the ClinicianCore Podcast explores unified clinical communication, physician burnout reduction, HIPAA-compliant collaboration, and the real impact of AI in healthcare.

New episodes are released every Monday at 1 PM EST.

If you’re a healthcare leader, physician, administrator, or innovator committed to improving clinical efficiency and restoring clarity to care delivery, this podcast is for you.

Follow or subscribe on your preferred platform so you never miss an episode.

Learn more about ClinicianCore and our mission to strengthen clinician collaboration at:
https://cliniciancore.com/

Connect with Dr. Kevin Halow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-halow-md/

Connect with Us

Nevada has 4 medical schools and still needs 2,300 more physicians. Here's the residency bottleneck nobody's fixing.

Nevada now has four medical schools, up from one, and still faces a shortage of 2,300 physicians. Dr. Kevin Halow breaks down why producing more graduates hasn't solved the problem: without enough in-state residency spots, Nevada's best students train and stay elsewhere. He connects the dots between GME funding gaps, early burnout among medical students, and the mentorship infrastructure that keeps physicians local. A look at what it actually takes to turn medical school growth into a lasting physician workforce.

About the ClinicianCore Podcast

Hosted by Dr. Kevin Halow, the ClinicianCore Podcast explores unified clinical communication, physician burnout reduction, HIPAA-compliant collaboration, and the real impact of AI in healthcare.

New episodes are released every Monday at 1 PM EST.

If you’re a healthcare leader, physician, administrator, or innovator committed to improving clinical efficiency and restoring clarity to care delivery, this podcast is for you.

Follow or subscribe on your preferred platform so you never miss an episode.

Learn more about ClinicianCore and our mission to strengthen clinician collaboration at:
https://cliniciancore.com/

Connect with Dr. Kevin Halow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-halow-md/

Connect with Us

Nevada carries a Health Professional Shortage Area designation in all 17 counties, and its general surgeon coverage ties with Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah for the lowest in the country. In this episode of The Connected Practice, Dr. Kevin Halow looks at the physicians who hold Nevada's healthcare system together without a title: the attending who reorganizes a fragmented chart before a handoff, the surgeon who insists a curbside opinion becomes a documented consult, the colleague who checks in before a shift instead of after a complaint. Drawing on a 2024 NIH review linking informal physician leadership to better patient outcomes and stronger organizational commitment, Dr. Halow makes the case that quiet leadership, not new hires alone, is what keeps care safe when physicians are stretched this thin.

About the ClinicianCore Podcast

Hosted by Dr. Kevin Halow, the ClinicianCore Podcast explores unified clinical communication, physician burnout reduction, HIPAA-compliant collaboration, and the real impact of AI in healthcare.

New episodes are released every Monday at 1 PM EST.

If you’re a healthcare leader, physician, administrator, or innovator committed to improving clinical efficiency and restoring clarity to care delivery, this podcast is for you.

Follow or subscribe on your preferred platform so you never miss an episode.

Learn more about ClinicianCore and our mission to strengthen clinician collaboration at:
https://cliniciancore.com/

Connect with Dr. Kevin Halow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-halow-md/

Connect with Us

Nevada ranks 45th in the nation for physicians per capita, and all 17 counties are federally designated health professional shortage areas. In this episode, Dr. Kevin Halow, surgeon, veteran, and Co-Founder of ClinicianCore, breaks down what physician isolation actually costs Nevada: delayed curbside consults that go undocumented, care transitions that turn into paperwork relays, and burnout driven by fragmented communication tools.

Dr. Halow lays out A Connected Nevada, a statewide initiative launching this September built on three pieces: HCO Practice HQ for intra-office routing, HCC Consult Core for documented interprofessional consults, and Doc Lounge, a verified peer community for physicians. All three run on a secure, HIPAA-compliant unified clinical communication platform built exclusively for physicians.

Topics covered:

• Why physician density alone does not explain Nevada's shortage
• The real cost of undocumented curbside consults
• How care transitions break down without a shared communication layer
• What burnout costs the healthcare system nationally
• Why Nevada is positioned to move first on this problem

About the ClinicianCore Podcast

Hosted by Dr. Kevin Halow, the ClinicianCore Podcast explores unified clinical communication, physician burnout reduction, HIPAA-compliant collaboration, and the real impact of AI in healthcare.

New episodes are released every Monday at 1 PM EST.

If you’re a healthcare leader, physician, administrator, or innovator committed to improving clinical efficiency and restoring clarity to care delivery, this podcast is for you.

Follow or subscribe on your preferred platform so you never miss an episode.

Learn more about ClinicianCore and our mission to strengthen clinician collaboration at:
https://cliniciancore.com/

Connect with Dr. Kevin Halow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-halow-md/