OMA Practice Management Algorithm™
Build a Stronger Obesity Medicine Practice.
Get comprehensive, experience-driven guidance for navigating the business of obesity medicine.
OMA Practice Management Algorithm: An Operational Guide for Building, Running, and Scaling an Obesity Medicine Practice
Clinical training prepares you to treat obesity; the Practice Management Algorithm prepares you to run the practice that makes that treatment possible. Built on the experience of twelve obesity medicine clinicians, it covers eight practice-management domains, real practice journey stories, and Office Forms to put to work day to day.
Chapter One: Understanding Obesity Medicine Practice Types
Chapter 1 explores three obesity medicine practice models (direct-pay, health system–based, hybrid, and insurance-based for independent obesity medicine practices), highlighting their financial, operational, and growth dynamics while recognizing that practices often evolve into hybrid models.
Chapter Two: Operational Domains
Chapter 2 explores the interconnected operational foundations that drive an obesity medicine practice’s efficiency, sustainability, compliance, patient experience, and long-term growth. Chapter 2 makes up approximately 80% of the Practice Management Algorithm™: learn more about the domains below.
Chapter Three: Obesity Medicine Practice Experiences
Chapter 3 shares six real-world practice journeys, revealing the challenges, missteps, lessons, and adaptations involved in building and growing obesity medicine practices across diverse models and settings.
Chapter Four: Office Forms
Chapter 4 provides practical, obesity medicine–specific forms for adult and pediatric practices that can be used as-is or adapted to fit existing systems, settings, and workflows. Whether you order the print or the digital version of the Practice Management Algorithm, the customizable office forms will be add to your OMA Academy account.
Build stronger systems. Make Informed Business Decisions. Create Sustainable Obesity Medicine Practices and Programs.
Rather than presenting practice management as a one-size-fits-all formula, the OMA Practice Management Algorithm™ helps clinicians understand the decisions, systems, and tradeoffs that shape successful obesity medicine practices. It combines practical business and operational guidance with real-world practice journeys, lessons learned from experienced clinicians, and obesity medicine–specific office forms that can be incorporated into or adapted for daily workflows.
Practice Management Algorithm™ Pricing
Operational Domains
The OMA Practice Management Algorithm™ covers eight interconnected sections that collectively determine how an obesity medicine practice functions.
Financial Strategy provides practical guidance for building and oversight of a financially sustainable obesity medicine practice while navigating overhead, revenue cycles, reimbursement changes, payer challenges, and specialty-specific financial risks.
Compliance, Legal, and Risk Management provides practical guidance for building and maintaining the legal, regulatory, privacy, documentation, and prescribing safeguards essential to a sustainable obesity medicine practice. Imperative to sustainable operations, this topic is woven throughout the book.
Operational Efficiency and Workflow Design provides practical guidance for building scalable systems that streamline care, improve team efficiency, support growth, and allow clinicians to focus on patients rather than administrative demands.
Technology, AI, and Digital Health Integration provides practical guidance for selecting and implementing tools that improve care, streamline workflows, protect clinician time, support compliance, and enable sustainable practice growth.
Staffing Your Team provides practical guidance for building, training, and managing a team that reflects practice values, supports efficient growth, and delivers compassionate, high-quality obesity care across practice settings.
Marketing, Branding, and Patient Acquisition provides practical guidance for ethically attracting and retaining the right patients, building trust and reputation, strengthening referrals, and creating sustainable growth.
Coding and Billing provides practical guidance for navigating documentation, coding, reimbursement, and evolving payer policies to support financial sustainability across obesity medicine practice models.
Prior Authorization, Appeals, and Payer Strategy provides practical guidance for building efficient systems that navigate coverage barriers, strengthen appeals, improve medication access, and protect clinical time.
OMA Practice Management Algorithm™
The Practice Management Algorithm™ gathers the financial, operational, and strategic knowledge that twelve obesity medicine clinicians have had to learn on their own, and brings it together in one practical, experience-driven guide.
Contributing Authors
Courtney Younglove, MD, MSCP, DABOM, FOMA, FACOG, DABOM
Principal Author
Stephanie Persondek, DO, DAOBOG, DABOM
Sadaf Mustafa, MD, MHCM, DABOM, DALM, FACP, FOMA
Sandra M. Palavecino, MD, DABOM, FOMA
Michael L. Glickman, MD, DABOM, ABLM
Jaymey Sweeney, RN, MN, FNP-C
Aradhna Saraswat, MD, DABOM
Christina Funk, DNP, FNP-C, APNP, FOMA
Suzanne Cuda, MD, DABOM, MFOMA
Karl Nadolsky, DO, FACE, DABOM
Tracy Norfleet, MD, MBA, DABOM, DABLM, FACP
Omotara J. Adewale, DNP, MPH, NP-C, FNP-BC
Using the Practice Management Algorithm™ in Practice
The OMA Practice Management Algorithm™ is written to be read from cover to cover or opened to a single topic as the need arises. Clinicians and practice teams use it for:
- Planning, launching, or restructuring an obesity medicine practice
- Day-to-day management of the financial, operational, and administrative sides of the practice
- Staffing and training on principles and the systems that keep a practice running
- Working through a specific challenge, from a coding decision to a prior-authorization workflow to a compliance question
- Guiding the transition from employment to independent practice, or the growth of an established one
A financially sound, well-run practice is what allows clinicians to keep their doors open and keep treating obesity as the chronic disease it is. The Practice Management Algorithm exists to make that possible for more clinicians, in more communities, so that more patients can access evidence-based obesity care.
Frequently Asked Questions
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The Practice Management Algorithm™ is a practical, experience-driven guide to building, managing, and growing an obesity medicine practice or program. It brings together the business, operational, financial, and strategic knowledge clinicians need to turn excellent obesity care into a sustainable practice.
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The Practice Management Algorithm™ is designed for clinicians at virtually any stage of obesity medicine practice—from those exploring or launching a new practice to clinicians managing an established practice, expanding a program, or improving operations within a health system.
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Yes. The Practice Management Algorithm™ is not just a startup guide. Established practices can use it to identify operational gaps, improve workflows, evaluate financial performance, strengthen teams, navigate payer challenges, integrate technology, and prepare for sustainable growth.
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The Practice Management Algorithm™ addresses direct-pay, health system–based, hybrid, and insurance-based for independent obesity medicine practices. It also includes considerations relevant to telehealth, pediatric obesity medicine, multidisciplinary programs, and practices evolving from one model to another.
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The Practice Management Algorithm™ addresses the interconnected systems behind a successful obesity medicine practice, including financial strategy; compliance, legal, and risk management; workflow and operational efficiency; technology, AI, and digital health; staffing; marketing and patient acquisition; coding and billing; and prior authorization, appeals, and payer strategy.
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General business advice often misses the realities of obesity medicine. The Practice Management Algorithm™ was developed specifically around the challenges clinicians in this specialty encounter—from rapidly changing reimbursement and medication coverage to prior authorizations, weight stigma, specialized workflows, and evolving models of care.
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The Practice Management Algorithm™ brings together the experience and practical knowledge of 12 obesity medicine clinicians who have built, operated, and grown practices and programs across different settings. It captures lessons clinicians often have to learn through years of trial, error, and experience.
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Yes. In addition to practice-management guidance, the Practice Management Algorithm™ shares the journeys of clinicians who have built and grown obesity medicine practices and programs. In their own words, they share what worked, what did not, what they had to change, and what they would do differently today.
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Yes. The Practice Management Algorithm™ includes a practical library of obesity medicine-specific office forms for adult and pediatric practices. These resources can be used as provided or adapted to fit your practice setting, electronic systems, and workflows.
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The Practice Management Algorithm™ is designed to help clinicians understand the decisions and infrastructure involved in launching a practice—from financial planning and legal considerations to staffing, workflows, technology, billing, marketing, and payer processes. It can help you anticipate issues before they become expensive problems.
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Yes. The Practice Management Algorithm™ emphasizes moving from clinician-dependent processes toward repeatable systems. It addresses capacity, staffing, workflow optimization, technology, financial decision-making, patient acquisition, and other considerations that become increasingly important as a practice grows.
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Yes. The Practice Management Algorithm™ addresses coding, documentation, billing, reimbursement, and evolving payer policies in obesity medicine. It also explains how these issues differ across direct-pay, insurance-based for independent practice and health system-based practices.
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Yes. Prior authorization, appeals infrastructure, and payer strategy receive dedicated attention. The Practice Management Algorithm™ examines how practices can build more efficient systems for navigating coverage requirements, supporting appeals, improving medication access, and reducing unnecessary administrative burden.
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The Practice Management Algorithm™ is a practice-management resource rather than a clinical prescribing guide. It addresses the operational realities surrounding obesity pharmacotherapy—including reimbursement, documentation, prior authorization, appeals, payer requirements, workflows, and medication access. For more clinical guidance, refer to the Obesity Algorithm from the OMA.
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Yes. The Practice Management Algorithm™ examines how practices can evaluate and integrate technology intentionally, including AI, automation, telehealth, virtual staffing, patient-engagement tools, platform selection, and cybersecurity. The focus is on technology that solves real operational problems rather than adding unnecessary complexity.
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No. The Practice Management Algorithm™ is relevant to clinicians and healthcare professionals involved in building, leading, or operating obesity medicine practices and programs. Its principles can also help practice administrators, leaders and team members better understand the systems required to deliver sustainable obesity care.
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Yes. Health-system clinicians may not control every financial or administrative decision, but they often influence program design, staffing needs, workflows, technology, documentation, patient access, and growth. The Practice Management Algorithm™ includes the health-system perspective throughout.
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No. The Practice Management Algorithm™ is an educational and practice-management resource, not individualized legal, accounting, coding, compliance, or financial advice. Instead, it can help clinicians understand the issues they need to consider and have more informed conversations with the professionals supporting their practice.
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Many of the contributors to the Practice Management Algorithm™ did exactly that. The resource consolidates their hard-earned lessons into one place so clinicians can learn from the decisions, mistakes, adaptations, and systems developed by people who have already navigated the business of obesity medicine.
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The Practice Management Algorithm™ gives clinicians a specialty-specific framework for the part of obesity medicine that clinical training rarely teaches: how to build the practice that makes excellent patient care possible. Instead of piecing together generic advice, clinicians gain one practical resource grounded in the realities of obesity medicine.