About this episode

Dr. Noah Kaufman discusses his transition from emergency medicine to founding a cash-pay urgent care practice.

Episode Summary Dr. Noah Kaufman - board-certified emergency physician with 20 years in the ER, seven seasons on American Ninja Warrior, and a new direct acute care practice in Denver - joins Drs. Koka and DiGiorgio to talk about why he walked away from the employed medicine model and built Cough Care, a cash-pay, fully transparent urgent care. The conversation covers the broken economics of emergency billing, why most urgent care is a race to the bottom, how price signals change both patient and physician behavior, and what a parallel direct care system could look like at scale -including the franchise model Kaufman is already planning. Chapter Markers 00:00 Introduction — Meet Dr. Noah Kaufman 02:12 What led to leaving the ER after 20 years 04:53 Becoming the patient — the moment everything clicked 09:33 What is Cough Care and where it sits between urgent care and the ER 13:54 Why he doesn't take insurance 16:30 How ER billing actually works — the 2.6 cm laceration rule 19:49 Can urgent care be shopped? The free market argument 21:17 One month in — what he's actually seeing 41:00 Does cost-consciousness lead to undertreating? 43:39 The culture of over-treatment and the evidence…

People in this episode

Hosts: Dr. Koka, Dr. DiGiorgio

Guest: Dr. Noah Kaufman

Topics covered

• emergency medicine
• direct care
• urgent care
• healthcare economics
• patient autonomy
• franchise model

Keywords

• emergency physician
• Cough Care
• urgent care
• healthcare system
• patient behavior
• direct acute care
• insurance
• billing
• franchise

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Cough Care, American Ninja Warrior

More episodes of The Doctor's Lounge

• The Atom Bomb Speaks: Tracy Høeg on COVID, Myocarditis, and the FDA From the Inside · June 10, 2026 · 1h 13m

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Doctor's Lounge podcast page.