When practice leaders call on MGMA for help, they're usually looking for a quick answer. What they may not realize is that sometimes the answer doesn't exist yet.
That's where senior editor and subject matter expert Christy Good, MPH, MBA, CPC, CMPE, comes in.
Before joining MGMA, Good spent years navigating the same operational challenges members face every day — managing physician practices, overseeing laboratory operations, developing medical office buildings, and helping practices transition into hospital employment.
"I've drunk through that fire hose that all our members struggle with," she said. Now, much of her job revolves around making sure other leaders don't have to.
Where Member Questions Become Tools
Good sits at the intersection of member questions, industry challenges, and practical solutions. When members submit questions through Ask an Advisor, those inquiries often land on her desk.
Some requests are straightforward. Others are anything but.
A consultant recently needed help modeling operating room scheduling using continuous-flow principles. Rather than pointing them toward an article or benchmarking report, Good built an Excel-based toolkit that incorporated patient access metrics, satisfaction measures, and operational modeling.
"That's something I did just this week," she said.
Building What Members Need
Sometimes the information already exists somewhere on MGMA's website. Sometimes it exists across multiple resources that need to be connected. And sometimes, Good said, it doesn't exist at all.
"I've developed policies on the fly," she said.
The process often works in reverse from what people might expect: A member encounters a problem, and Good develops a tool, calculator, checklist, or framework to help solve it. Later, those resources may be refined and shared more broadly so other practices can benefit.
The result is less like a library and more like a living workshop.
Playbooks as Roadmaps
That philosophy helped inspire one of MGMA's newer resource formats: MGMA Playbooks.
For years, MGMA had deep content on topics ranging from physician compensation to recruiting, compliance, staffing, and revenue cycle management. The organization does not lack information or resources, but the challenge has been finding it all in one place.
The playbooks were designed to pull those pieces together. "How do I do this? What actions can I take?" Good said, describing the mindset behind the playbook format.
MGMA now offers 19 playbooks, with more on the way. They're designed to help practice leaders identify gaps in their processes and provide a practical framework for working through operational challenges without having to conduct multiple searches.
For example, the Physician Compensation Playbook outlines five factors to consider when deciding between a base salary and a productivity-based compensation model: income stability, burnout risk, quality of care, physician incentives, and recruitment and retention. Rather than relying on instinct or tradition, leaders can use those criteria to evaluate which approach best fits their organization.
The MGMA Community as a "Second Brain"
One of Good's favorite resources isn't a toolkit, report, or playbook at all. It's other members.
Whenever she responds to a question, she often points people toward the MGMA Community, where thousands of practice leaders exchange ideas, documents, workflows, and advice.
"I always remind them, go ask your colleagues," she said.
The scale of those networks can surprise members. MGMA's Financial and Revenue Management Network includes roughly 4,400 members, while the Clinical Staff Network has grown to more than 8,300 participants.
Healthcare leaders may face different day-to-day challenges, but many of their toughest questions are shared. "They're the ones who are doing it right now, every day," Good said.
Where AI Fits
The conversation also touched on MGMA's growing use of AI.
Good noted that MGMA's Ask AI feature (found on the MGMA website, at the bottom of each page) can help members quickly surface find content, but she sees it as a starting point rather than a replacement for expert guidance.
"If you click on it and [type in] physician comp, it's going to give ... information on what we might have on physician comp," she said. What it won't always do is uncover every relevant resource or provide a tailored answer to a unique operational challenge.
"Ask an Advisor [is for], 'Okay, I did not find what I was looking for,'" Good said. Technology can accelerate access to information, but human experience is what turns information into action.
Helping Members Make the Challenging Manageable
Good's mission to help make healthcare leaders' biggest challenges more manageable shows up whether she's building a scheduling calculator, answering a member question, or helping shape the next generation of MGMA resources.
"My goal is to make it easier on them down the road than what I learned the hard way," she said.
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