About this episode

Melinda Mastel discusses the importance of strategic thinking in finance for medical groups and offers actionable tips for practice leaders.

Strategic thinking is often treated as an executive skill — something reserved for leadership retreats and long-range planning sessions. Melinda Mastel, MBA, MS, FHFMA, CMPE, PMP, a financial advisor at the Medical College of Wisconsin, argues it belongs on every finance professional's desk on a normal Tuesday. Physicians Practice Managing Editor Keith Reynolds speaks with Mastel about what actually drives budget misses in medical groups, why the culprit is almost never the numbers themselves, and how small changes in the way financial data is tracked and presented can produce bigger operational shifts than most practice leaders expect. They also cover what a minimum viable product approach looks like in a health care finance context, why scope creep is the quiet killer of practice improvement projects, how to align cross-functional teams that can't agree on what the problem actually is, and why curiosity is the skill that most reliably turns an early-career finance professional into a trusted advisor. Mastel closes with two concrete tips practice leaders can implement immediately: challenge your assumptions about what can and can't change, and expand who you're hearing from…

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