Bees Teach Doctors About Strategy

Subject: Bees Teach Doctors About Strategy

June 13, 2025

Dear Friend,

Considering honey bees have been on earth for between 40 to 150 million years, it pays to consider their hive strategy for success, especially because it maps perfectly onto medical groups.

Here it is.

The huge percentage, maybe 80%, of forging bees in the hive exploit nectar and pollen sources already known to them as communicated by the foragers’ “waggle dance”. Yet the remainder of the foragers ignore the existing information and seemingly wander outside the hive like delinquent teenagers.

And it’s exactly that seemingly inefficient behavior, a bit of blowing off of better exploitation for a bit of exploration, that results in finding new food sources, and, in the long run, the survival of the hive.

Many medical groups, especially hospital-based groups such as anesthesiology or radiology groups, identify a place to locate their “hive”, a hospital or even a hospital system. Then they exploit it and exploit it until the food source is gone. Gone by way of the loss of a contract, gone by way of the death of the hospital, or gone by the gradual starvation of declining payments and increasing costs.

The key, even in difficult staffing times, is a weighted balance between exploiting existing business sources and exploring for new ones.

You need to be more like bees.

If you’re buzzing to learn multiple strategies to achieve that weighted balance, let’s talk.

Why Hospital-Based Medical Groups Must Exploit Honey Bee Strategy

Pain Doc Likely in Pain After Settling Allegations That Billed Procedures Weren’t Performed

Was it billing fraud or a billing mistake?

I don’t know and no one admitted it, but Dr. Benjamin Tiongson, a pain management physician practicing through Pain Reduction Center, P.A. in the greater Houston, TX metroplex agreed to pay the government $390,082 to resolve allegations he submitted false claims to Medicare.

According to the allegations, Tiongson billed Medicare for the surgical implantation of neurostimulator electrodes. That’s an invasive procedure usually performed in an O.R. and for which Medicare pays thousands of dollars.

However, the government claims that neither Tiongson nor his staff actually performed those surgical procedures. Instead, the government says, they provided patients, in the practice’s clinic space, with electro-acupuncture devices which involve inserting monofilament wire a few millimeters into patients’ ears (that’s not a surgical procedure) and taping the device behind the patient’s ear.

Was it a scam or an error? A settlement is just that and there’s been no determination of liability.

Neither you nor I can know for sure what went on, but either way, there’s a lesson here about billing compliance. Even if it were a mistake, it cost the doctor close to $400,000 plus what I’d guess were substantial legal fees to get out of it.

Remember, although you might say that the first step in compliance is to adopt a compliance plan, a compliance plan that isn’t part of an active compliance process is as ineffective as that flu shot that you forgot to get.

And, even if you got that flu shot, it’s still not 100% effective and neither is a process unless it’s actively maintained. I’m talking about reviews, internal audits, external audits, and the like. That’s an active process.

It’s certainly not that binder on your shelf gathering dust, or even worse, the Word document on a hard drive.

Pain Doc Likely in Pain After Settling Allegations That Billed Procedures Weren’t Performed

Special Update: Oregon SB 951

Will Oregon’s new law attacking PE investment in physician practices spawn progeny in other states? Will investors divest? Will they be sued for securities fraud? Will physician deals dry up?

Mark was interviewed by Justin Harvey for the APM Success podcast.

Listen to the podcast here.

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Subject: Bees Teach Doctors About Strategy