Healthcare Econ 101 - Ep. 1: The Language of Money & Insurance Structures

Behind The Knife: The Surgery Podcast

Education, Science, Health & Fitness, Medicine

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2026

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ever feel like you’re fluent in medical jargon but totally illiterate when it comes to the business side of surgery? You’re not alone. In this series premiere, Dr. Christopher Childers (Surgical Oncologist and health policy expert) joins Dr. Nina Clark to demystify the "second world" of medicine: healthcare finance. We’re breaking down the basic vocabulary every surgeon needs to advocate for themselves and their patients.

Next Step: Ready to see how this translates to your paycheck? In Episode 2, we dive into Physician and Hospital Compensation, RVUs, and the flow of funds.

***Fellowship Application Link: https://forms.gle/QSUrR2GWHDZ1MmWC6

Transcript

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0:00.0	Behind the Night, the Surgery Podcast, relevant and engaging content, to join the Behind the Knife team as a surgical education fellow.
0:28.8	We're looking for enterprising surgical residents to take the bull by the horns and build something new and exciting.
0:35.5	Fellows will benefit from ample support from the Behind the Knife team,
0:38.9	including the use of our digital education platform, and access to all of our resources like
0:43.7	illustrators, video editing, AI tools, social media, and more. Get your name out there and build
0:50.1	your CV by being part of the number one surgery education platform in the world. We're offering a
0:56.2	two-year fellowship starting July 26 and ending in June 28. Only residents beginning their two-year
1:03.0	academic development time will be considered. Check out the show notes for more information,
1:07.5	including the application link. All applications are due on April 20th. Again,
1:13.0	all applications are due by April 20th. Now, get out there and dominate the day.
1:19.4	Hi, everyone, and welcome to Behind the Knife. I'm Nina, I'm one of the chief residents at the
1:24.1	University of Washington and general surgery. And I've worked with Behind the Knife
1:27.5	over the past several years, and I'm super excited to join in helping with this new mini-series
1:32.9	that we are doing, focusing on health care finance. In this series, we will take you through
1:37.6	the basics of health care finance terminology and insurance structures today, and then in future
1:42.5	episodes, we'll dive into how physicians and hospitals get paid, and a little bit of how billing and coding work within our health care system.
1:49.3	The leader of this series is going to be Dr. Christopher Childers, who's a surgical oncologist at the University of Washington.
1:55.5	Dr. Childers, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what the impetus was for the series?
2:00.9	Sure. Well, thanks so much for having me. I think that, you know, one of the things that we
2:05.9	learn really well in residency is how to take care of patients and how to operate. And one of the
2:10.2	things that we learn really poorly is everything else associated with a surgical practice,
2:17.1	especially kind of the business side of
	...

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