Mastering Billing and Coding with Dr. Marc Toglia

Okay.

So what did he say to you that got you interested in coding, got you on board?

Well, Ed made me realize that it was important as a GYN surgeon that we advocate for being fairly paid for what we did.

I mean, being a surgeon is a huge investment.

It's a huge investment in time.

Just to give you some further background.

So when I left Michigan, I went to Stony Brook, which was a university.

Although my employment was somewhat hybrid, which meant part of my salary was being paid through the university.

That was the teaching part.

but the physician kind of reimbursement was actually a separate entity.

And that was probably the majority of my salary.

And my chairman, Bob Barbieri, said, look, we're going to pay you roughly this percentage of what you bring in.

So it was front of mind at the time.

And as someone who is not going to practice OB, and someone who is just starting out, it's not like they're just going to dump a huge volume of surgery in my lap.

And when you walk into an OB practice, you've already got that guaranteed 15 to 30 deliveries per month.

Yeah, absolutely.

So it really made me think about, OK, I've got to use my time wisely and be a little bit more thoughtful.

And in the first couple of years, it was sort of back of mind.

And I really was more pursuing the more traditional pathway.

I was writing papers and book chapters.

and doing some scientific research.

And then I just started to get frustrated with how long that was taking and the fact that you could spend an incredible amount of time and it really ended up with nothing.

And as I started to get more involved with SGS and AUGS, I started to contemplate, how can I best contribute? to our specialty, because let's face it, not everybody practices in a type of environment that is conducive to a lot of what we see at these meetings.

Not everybody can run these randomized trials.

Not everybody has a whole arm of support.