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CME expires November 8, 2029

Your Practice. Your Career. Your Future.

The AAOS Practice Management Certificate is a seven-module course that prepares orthopaedic surgeons to make informed business, operational, leadership, and career decisions that support sustainable practice and patient care. Explore practice models and healthcare economics; the revenue cycle, coding, documentation, and billing; financial literacy and practice performance; operations, access, and throughput; leadership, culture, and team management; strategy, transactions, compliance, and external relationships; and personal, career, wealth, and life planning.

Develop practical skills to compare employment and ownership arrangements, interpret financial and performance data, strengthen documentation and revenue-cycle integrity, evaluate staffing and capacity, address team concerns, and assess growth opportunities and contractual commitments. Connect these decisions with clinical independence, patient access, professional responsibilities, and personal priorities.

Throughout the course, apply these concepts to a longitudinal case involving the fictional CEC Orthopaedic Group. Serve in physician leadership roles, reassess evolving problems, and use the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Practice Management Field Guide to develop recommendations and action plans. Identify supporting evidence, missing information, risks, accountable owners, measures, and conditions for proceeding with or reconsidering decisions. Recognize if legal, accounting, coding, compliance, valuation, tax, insurance, or financial planning expertise is necessary.

Editors

John Cherf, MD, MPH, MBA, FAAOS

Michael Behr, MD, MBA, FAAOS

Daniel Gibbs, MD, MBA, FAAOS

Adam Levin, MD, FAAOS

Peter Mangone, MD, FAAOS

Michael McCaslin, CPA

Learning Objectives

• Compare orthopaedic practice models, employment and ownership arrangements, and compensation structures with regard to governance, autonomy, incentives, financial risk, and career fit.
• Evaluate revenue-cycle workflows, clinical documentation, coding, and denial patterns to identify corrective actions that support accurate reporting, appropriate reimbursement, and compliance.
• Interpret financial statements, productivity measures, cost structures, contribution margins, and valuation assumptions to assess practice performance and inform resource decisions.
• Develop an access and throughput improvement plan using validated demand and capacity data; workflow analysis; staffing and scheduling assessments; and outcome, process, and balancing measures.
• Develop leadership responses for conduct and culture concerns using observable evidence, clear behavioral expectations, psychological safety, fair process, and appropriate escalation.
• Evaluate growth opportunities, partnerships, vendor agreements, marketing proposals, and practice transactions for strategic fit, economics, governance, clinical independence, compliance risks, and required expert review.
• Develop a personal, career, wealth, and transition plan that integrates employment terms, financial needs, risk protection, life changes, patient continuity, and appropriate specialist advice.

Earn up to 15 AMA PRA Category 1 CME credits™.