Cut & Tell

Hippocratic Collective
  • 5.0 (19)
  • Medicine

Cut & Tell is a real-time account of becoming a surgeon—at the exact moment the training wheels come off. Hosted by plastic surgery chief resident Elizabeth Malphrus, this show follows the transition from residency to “year one”: the first, most disorienting, and most defining stretch of a surgical career. It’s where the identity you’ve spent a decade building is suddenly tested—clinically, professionally, and personally. This is not a retrospective. It’s happening now. Through solo episodes, unfiltered conversations, and stories from inside the operating room and beyond, Cut & Tell explores what it actually takes to become a surgeon: the structure of training, the emotional cost, the invisible curriculum, and the tension between perfection and reality in a high-stakes field. It also asks harder questions—about trust in medicine, the role of physicians in a changing cultural landscape, and what it means to step into authority when you’re not sure you’re ready.

  1. 4d ago

    Why price transparency didn't make healthcare cheaper: the ACA, chargemasters, and the Veblen effect

    Why hasn’t showing patients prices made healthcare cheaper? For more than a decade, policymakers bet that price transparency would let patients shop around and push costs down. Liz looks at what actually happened, from the ACA’s vague “standard charges” language to chargemasters, hospital price tools, and the No Surprises Act. She also shares what she’s learned setting prices as a first-year aesthetic surgeon, including why cheaper can look worse to patients. Her conclusion: if we want real transparency, it has to come from health insurers. Rate, review, and subscribe, and find more shows at the Hippocratic Collective.

  2. Oct 22

    Residency Interview Advice: Mind Games, Board Games, and Managing the Vibes

    What do interviewers actually remember about you? It isn’t your answers. In this episode, plastic surgeon Dr. Liz Malphrus goes past the standard “be yourself” advice and shares what worked on the plastic surgery interview trail. She covers the wild rooms, including Operation, paper-folding tests, and a question that should never have been asked. She also explains how she prepared, which questions to ask and which to avoid, why the coordinator and the resident room matter, and how to handle the social event. Plus, a preview of a new recurring segment: First Job M&M. Host: Liz Malphrus, MD Connect with Liz: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/liz-malphrus-md IG: @dr.malphrus Produced By: The Hippocratic Collective Subscribe to @hippocraticcollective on Youtube for all of the other shows and content the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

  3. Oct 15

    You can sue your doctor, but not your insurer?

    What if doctors ran medicine the way lawyers run law? Lawyers, accountants and dentists have kept control of their professions, while physicians have lost control of both who owns them and who pays them. Liz looks at corporate practice of medicine laws that exist on paper but not in practice, the ERISA provision that shields insurers from liability for denials that harm patients, and vertical integration from UnitedHealth/Optum. She then lays out what physicians can do to win back professional sovereignty. Referenced: Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine; Zhu et al, "A doctrine in name only," NEJM (2023) Host: Liz Malphrus, MD Connect with Liz: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/liz-malphrus-md IG: @dr.malphrus Produced By: The Hippocratic Collective Subscribe to @hippocraticcollective on Youtube for all of the other shows and content the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

  4. Oct 8

    Coaching, panic, and the arrival fallacy: a surgery chat with Mel Thacker, MD

    What happens when you become the surgeon, pay off the loans, and still feel empty? On Cut & Tell’s first guest episode, Dr. Mel Thacker (ENT, surgeon coach, and host of Surgeons with Purpose) joins me to talk about her new memoir, Scrubbing In. It covers her path from childhood neglect to surgery, the arrival fallacy, and the panic attacks in the OR that finally forced her to face it all. We also get into how insurance incentives quietly shape clinical decisions, why Mel walked away from private practice, why residency needs coaching, and how she built a part-time locums career on her own terms. 📚 Referenced: Scrubbing In: A Surgeon’s Journey from Self-Doubt to Wholeness by Dr. Mel Thacker; “When Incentives Become Instinct” (Hippocratic Collective); The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek Enjoyed this episode? Rate, review, and subscribe, and find more shows at hippocratic-collective.com. Host: Liz Malphrus, MD Connect with Liz: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/liz-malphrus-md IG: @dr.malphrus Produced By: The Hippocratic Collective Subscribe to @hippocraticcollective on Youtube for all of the other shows and content the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

  5. Oct 1

    Financialization of Healthcare: How Money Became the Mission

    Administrative bloat, skyrocketing CEO pay, hospital mergers, rural closures. These aren't separate problems. They're symptoms of one syndrome: financialization. In this episode, Liz breaks down how hospitals and practices went from places that care for people to assets that exist to generate returns, and why nonprofit hospitals now behave almost exactly like for-profits. We cover the vocabulary that gets thrown around in boardrooms (marketization, corporatization, privatization), the administrator arms race between hospitals and insurers, what hospital CEOs are actually paid to optimize for, and how consolidation drives up prices without improving quality. Then we get to what doctors can do about it, from unionization to clinician leadership requirements to cutting out the insurance middleman. It's Goodhart's Law on a massive scale: when growth and revenue are the targets, healthcare stops being the point. 📚 Referenced: Bruch, Roy & Grogan, "The Financialization of Health in the United States," New England Journal of Medicine (2024)Blumenthal & Galvin, "The Vocabulary of Our Discontent," JAMA"Money has become the mission," The Lancet (2025) ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 Welcome to Cut & Tell 00:19 From the administrator boom to a bigger problem 02:22 Financialization as a syndrome 04:56 Defining financialization 07:30 Marketization: the 1980s shift 12:52 Corporatization and consolidation 14:14 Why nonprofits act like for-profits 15:15 Privatization and Medicare Advantage 16:38 Money has become the mission 21:02 The administrator boom, by the numbers 24:45 The US vs. Canada and the VA 27:51 The hospital–insurer arms race 29:59 Executive pay 33:20 CEO-to-employee pay ratios 36:05 What CEOs are actually paid for 39:08 Mergers, prices, and hospital closures 44:30 The administrative accountability gap 46:30 Recap 48:00 What doctors can do about it If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate us five stars, and leave a review. Better yet, send it to someone who should be outraged, or at least better informed. Check out more shows and content at hippocratic-collective.com. #HealthPolicy #Healthcare #HospitalCEO #Financialization #PhysicianLife #MedicalPodcast #CutAndTell #DoctorsOfInstagram Host: Liz Malphrus, MD Connect with Liz: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/liz-malphrus-md IG: @dr.malphrus Produced By: The Hippocratic Collective Subscribe to @hippocraticcollective on Youtube for all of the other shows and content the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

  6. Sep 24

    Healthcare's Obsession with Metrics, and Why it keeps Backfiring

    What happens when a well-intentioned healthcare metric gets turned into a target? Nothing good — and Liz has the receipts. Before medical school, she spent two and a half years as study director for a major National Academies report on healthcare measurement. Then she went to residency, and everything she believed fell apart. This episode walks through the VA wait-time scandal, MIPS, and the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program — three cautionary tales about what happens when you attach incentives to healthcare data, and why Goodhart's Law keeps winning. 📚 Referenced: Vital Signs: Core Metrics for Health and Healthcare Progress (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine) Host: Liz Malphrus, MD Connect with Liz: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/liz-malphrus-md IG: @dr.malphrus Produced By: The Hippocratic Collective Subscribe to @hippocraticcollective on Youtube for all of the other shows and content the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

  7. Sep 17

    Private equity is eating healthcare alive

    Would you send someone you love to a hospital owned by private equity? Dr. Liz Malphrus breaks down exactly how private equity works, why it's poured billions into healthcare since 2018, and what the data says about the cost, safety, and physician burnout that follow. Plus: the exact questions to ask before taking a private-equity-backed job. Referenced: BMJ systematic review on PE and healthcare quality/cost; JAMA analysis of Medicare claims on PE hospital acquisitions and patient safety; physician satisfaction and autonomy survey data.Host: Liz Malphrus, MD Connect with Liz: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/liz-malphrus-md IG: @dr.malphrus Produced By: The Hippocratic Collective Subscribe to @hippocraticcollective on Youtube for all of the other shows and content the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

  8. Sep 10

    Prior auths, step therapy, and AI: how doctors lose their professional sovreignty

    Every week, doctors spend 13 hours fighting insurance companies just for permission to treat their patients — and now, under a new Medicare pilot, some of those decisions are being handed to AI. In this episode, Liz digs into prior authorization: where it came from, how it quietly stripped doctors of their professional sovereignty, and why the newest version of this system might be the most alarming yet. 📚 Referenced: The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr Host: Liz Malphrus, MD Connect with Liz: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/liz-malphrus-md IG: @dr.malphrus Produced By: The Hippocratic Collective Subscribe to @hippocraticcollective on Youtube for all of the other shows and content the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

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5
out of 5
19 Ratings

About

Cut & Tell is a real-time account of becoming a surgeon—at the exact moment the training wheels come off. Hosted by plastic surgery chief resident Elizabeth Malphrus, this show follows the transition from residency to “year one”: the first, most disorienting, and most defining stretch of a surgical career. It’s where the identity you’ve spent a decade building is suddenly tested—clinically, professionally, and personally. This is not a retrospective. It’s happening now. Through solo episodes, unfiltered conversations, and stories from inside the operating room and beyond, Cut & Tell explores what it actually takes to become a surgeon: the structure of training, the emotional cost, the invisible curriculum, and the tension between perfection and reality in a high-stakes field. It also asks harder questions—about trust in medicine, the role of physicians in a changing cultural landscape, and what it means to step into authority when you’re not sure you’re ready.

Information

  • Creator
    Hippocratic Collective
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    26
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Hippocratic Collective
  • Show Website
    Cut & Tell

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