Going Independent Doesn't Mean Going It Alone. Dr. Basil Kahwash on Fixing Referrals and Building Physician Networks
About this episode
Dr. Graham Walker interviews Dr. Basil Kahwash about the challenges of the referral system in independent medical practice.
Most physicians have had a referral disappear. Many have spent days tracking down a colleague just to coordinate care for a single patient. In this episode of How I Doctor, Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Dr. Basil Kahwash, an allergist and immunologist in Columbus, Ohio, to talk about one of the most universal and underappreciated problems in medicine: the referral system is broken, and independent physicians are paying the highest price. Basil didn't set out to become an advocate for fixing referrals. He trained at Vanderbilt, where reaching a collaborating physician was as simple as sending an Epic message or jumping on a 20-minute Zoom call with three specialists at once. Then he went into independent practice in Columbus and discovered that none of that infrastructure existed. No shared records. No easy way to reach a referring physician. No directory of local specialists. Just a fax machine, a stack of paper charts, and a phone number he hoped was still current. The referral black hole isn't just a physician frustration. It's a patient safety problem. Basil shares the story of a pregnant patient with a rare drug allergy whose referring OB-GYN he couldn't…
People in this episode
Host: Dr. Graham Walker
Guest: Dr. Basil Kahwash
Topics covered
- referral system
- independent practice
- patient safety
- physician networks
- healthcare infrastructure
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Vanderbilt, Offcall
Places: Columbus, Ohio, offcall.com/manifesto
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