Why Listen: An orthopedic surgeon who built and sold a physician-owned surgical hospital explains, in plain language, how practices win on contracts, culture, and capital. If you’re serious about independence, this is your operating manual for the next 12–24 months.

👥 Host: Dutch Rojas – Founder, Rojas Media and Bliksem Health

Guest: Dr. James “Jamie” McAtee – Orthopedic Surgeon, Partner at Orthopaedic & Sports Medicine Center (Manhattan, KS); Co-founder/leader at Manhattan Surgical Hospital; K-State alum and lifelong advocate for physician ownership

Episode Overview

Dutch sits down with Dr. McAtee to unpack how a small college town became a case study in physician leadership. They cover the origin story of Manhattan Surgical Hospital, raising capital (OpCo + PropCo), negotiating payer contracts (and why implants make or break your margins), and the cultural discipline required to keep a practice aligned for decades. McAtee details insurer tactics like retroactive “medical necessity” denials and AI-driven auth games—and how to respond. The conversation closes with strategy: federated models, MSO mechanics, retreats that actually matter, and the political trench war over the physician-owned hospital moratorium.

Notable Quotes

• “You have to have one or two partners willing to carry the workload on strategy.”

• “Insurers say no pre-auth…then deny it retroactively. That’s not fair.”

• “We built OpCo and PropCo—and used local banking that participated in the loan.”

• “Culture is an expectation: if you want to be here, this is how we behave.”

• “Physician-owned hospitals consistently lead on outcomes—and still face a moratorium.”

📚 What You’ll Learn

– How to structure and finance a physician-owned facility (OpCo vs. real estate)

– The payer math: DRGs, implant costs, and why case-level analysis wins contracts

– A practical approach to pre-auths in the age of AI (speak patient vs. legal charting)

– Building durable culture: expectations, accountability, and quarterly deep-dive retreats

– Federated models/MSOs: why “coopetition” beats isolation for independent groups

– Policy reality check: navigating the POH moratorium with creative ownership models

⏱ The Episode (Timestamps)

00:00 – Why Manhattan, KS and the K-State effect on practice growth

06:00 – From OR to boardroom: why McAtee built a surgical hospital

09:45 – Capital stack 101: OpCo, PropCo, and local bank participation

12:00 – Blueprints vs. flow: designing for industrial engineering, not just code

14:35 – Payer reality: DRGs, implants, and uneven reimbursement

15:55 – Retro denials & AI: “bone-on-bone” vs. clinical nomenclature

18:30 – Near-term ops: authorizations, EHR/AI, and squeezing waste

19:45 – Federated MSO vision and why organic physician growth stalled

21:30 – Coopetition mindset: uniting against carrier/system leverage

22:45 – Property & casualty: moving from premiums to contributions and float

26:45 – Leadership cadence: create “productive chaos,” then guide the team

27:50 – Retreats that work: weekly huddles + quarterly deep dives

28:55 – Strategy ownership: two partners carry the torch; others cede control

32:00 – Culture rules: high standards, low drama, long-term alignment

33:20 – Policy: POH moratorium, workarounds, and the path forward

🎯 Why Listen

What if patients and doctors could finally see behind the curtain of healthcare pricing? In this episode, Dutch Rojas speaks with the founders of MedReveal—three brilliant student entrepreneurs solving one of the most frustrating problems in medicine: price transparency. Discover how they’re empowering independent practices, fighting for fair negotiations, and wrangling absurdly massive data files to bring pricing power back where it belongs.

👥 Host

Dutch Rojas – Founder, Rojas Media and Bliksem Health

👥 Guests

• Seyun Jeong – Tech lead and co-founder, MedReveal
• Claire Elah Doua – Healthcare strategist and co-founder, MedReveal
• Tarun Sai Janapati – Data analytics lead and co-founder, MedReveal

📌 Episode Overview

In a wide-ranging and inspiring conversation, Dutch sits down with the MedReveal team to discuss their path from student incubator to venture-backed startup. The team explains how current pricing data—while technically “public”—is effectively unusable due to massive file sizes, messy formats, and obfuscation. Learn how they’re decoding it all to provide real benchmarking tools to help independent practices negotiate fair contracts and stay alive in an increasingly consolidated market.

💬 Notable Quotes

📚 What You’ll Learn

• Why price transparency is broken in practice, even if it’s law on paper
• How MedReveal extracts, cleans, and makes sense of gigabyte-scale insurer data
• Why independent doctors are disadvantaged in contract negotiations—and how this startup helps
• The staggering technical challenges behind accessing and cleaning pricing data
• How foreign-born founders bring a unique urgency to solving U.S. healthcare problems
• How MedReveal is already generating revenue and scaling across the country

⏱ The Episode (Timestamps)

00:00 – Tarun’s data nightmare: why pricing files are practically unusable

02:30 – Meet the MedReveal team and their SLU origins

04:30 – Claire’s global health journey from Cameroon to Philadelphia

08:00 – Why price transparency matters for both patients and providers

12:00 – How providers can use MedReveal’s data to renegotiate contracts

17:00 – Tech stack and startup challenges: from zombie rows to insights

21:30 – Real use cases: Orthopedic groups, benchmarking, and the business model

28:00 – Group leverage: when do independent docs gain contracting power?

34:00 – Startup goals by December: customers, outcomes, education

38:00 – Dutch on pricing as the foundation of real reform

Why Listen? This episode dives into what drives the next generation of physicians to fight for their profession.

Dutch Rojas sits down with neurosurgeon and podcast host Dr. JP Kolcun for a candid, funny, and deeply human conversation about the moral obligation to speak up, the optimism of young doctors, and why the future of medicine might depend on radical honesty and renewed physician leadership.

Host: Dutch Rojas – Founder, Rojas Media and Bliksem Health

Guest: Dr. JP Kolcun – Neurosurgeon, Co-Host of The Neurosurgery Podcast

Episode Overview

In this wide-ranging conversation, Dutch and Dr. Kolcun discuss everything from Founders Podcast and leadership lessons from NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang to the realities of physician advocacy, the neurosurgery culture, and the challenges of uniting physicians under one mission.

Dr. Kolcun reflects on his journey from musician to neurosurgeon, the influence of optimism and honesty in medicine, and why he co-founded The Neurosurgery Podcast as a counterpoint to Dr. Death. Dutch and Dr. Kolcun also tackle generational mindsets, the fight for physician-owned hospitals, and how advocacy starts with understanding the “rules of the game.”

💬 Notable Quotes

• “I have this vein of almost pathological honesty in me. When I see something wrong, I feel compelled to call it out.” – JP Kolcun, MD

• “You can’t morally place yourself in someone else’s position and pretend you’d do better. We’d all be jerks too.” – Dutch Rojas

• “Every neurosurgeon likes to think we’re the Navy SEALs of medicine—but under the surface, we’re all geeks about our own little thing.” – JP Kolcun, MD

• “We can’t own the means of production in our own industry. That’s an affront to the profession.” – JP Kolcun, MD

• “The way you get doctors on the same page is by focusing on what benefits all physicians—at the expense of no one.” – JP Kolcun, MD

📚 What You’ll Learn

– Why young physicians are more optimistic than ever

– The origin story of The Neurosurgery Podcast and its mission

– How neurosurgeons are leading advocacy for physician-owned hospitals

– Why unity across medical specialties is essential for reform

– The role of honesty and moral courage in physician leadership

– How generational perspective can reframe pessimism in healthcare

– What advocacy looks like from within the neurosurgical community

– Why optimism is a prerequisite for medicine—and for reform

⏱ The Episode (Timestamps)

00:00 – Introduction & The Founders Podcast

03:45 – Leadership lessons from NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang

07:30 – JP’s journey: from musician to neurosurgeon

12:40 – Discovering advocacy and the moral duty to speak up

18:25 – Physician optimism and generational mindset shifts

24:15 – How neurosurgeons organize and advocate nationally

28:00 – Building unity across medical specialties

31:45 – Inside The Neurosurgery Podcast

35:10 – Why advocacy is an act of optimism

39:00 – Dutch’s reflections and closing