Practice operations and performance
Provider productivity, scheduling and throughput, staffing models, site-level contribution, and telling the difference between a volume problem and a workflow problem.
Solo practice · Healthcare advisory
Most healthcare problems are three problems wearing one coat.
Stellaris Advisors is the advisory practice of Ahmad Rashid, DPM — a practicing physician, owner-operator of a multi-site clinical practice, and a master's in accounting. The clinical answer, the operational answer, and the financial answer rarely point the same direction. I get hired to reconcile them into one you can act on.
Who calls
Usually after the internal options are gone.
I take a small number of clients at a time. These are the settings where the clinical, operational, and financial reads all genuinely apply — not just one of the three.
01 / Provider
Physician groups
Independent and specialty practices, single site through small multi-site, carrying growth, staffing, or margin pressure.
02 / Post-acute
Facility operators
Skilled nursing, long-term care, and home-based providers building or repairing a physician service line.
03 / Payer
Plans & review vendors
Health plans, utilization management vendors, and peer review firms who need clinical program design and reviewer-side rigor.
04 / Product
Digital health
Telehealth and care-delivery companies who need a licensed clinician's judgment built into the product, not bolted on after launch.
The work
Six problems that keep showing up.
If yours isn't listed but lives in the same neighborhood, ask. If it's outside what I can do well, I'll say so and point you somewhere better.
Utilization management and clinical quality
UM program design, criteria selection and consistent application, reviewer onboarding and inter-rater reliability, appeals workflow, and QAPI structure that survives an audit.
Post-acute and facility-based service lines
Standing up or fixing physician coverage in SNF and LTC settings: coverage models, facility relationships, documentation standards, and workflows that hold up under review.
Telehealth program design
Cash-pay, hybrid, and multi-state models — licensure strategy, scope and standard-of-care guardrails, prescribing policy, intake design, and documentation that matches the care actually delivered.
Financial and analytic review
Payer mix and contribution analysis, fee schedule and cash-pay pricing, service line modeling, build-versus-buy, and a second set of eyes on the forecast before you commit to it.
Clinical policy and program documentation
Protocols, criteria sets, chart standards, monitoring policies, and physician-facing training material — written by a clinician who has to live with the same documents.
How engagements run
Scope small. Earn the next piece.
Most work starts at the first stage and stops there if that's all you need. Nothing rolls forward automatically.
Stage 01
Diagnostic
A focused look at one problem. Document and data review, interviews with the people doing the work, and written findings with recommendations ranked by what they cost you and what they return.
Stage 02
Build
Turning a recommendation into the actual artifact — the program, the policy set, the coverage model, the pricing, the workflow — and staying long enough to watch it survive contact with your staff.
Stage 03
Standing advisory
A monthly retainer for organizations that mainly need a clinician-operator on call: decisions reviewed as they arise, committee and board support, and a candid read before you commit to something large.
Fit
When not to hire me.
Saying this up front costs me a few calls and saves us both the wrong engagement.
- You need a body count. There's one of me. Enterprise-scale transformation needs a firm with a bench, and I'll tell you which ones to call.
- You've already decided. If the work is to produce a document supporting a conclusion someone reached last quarter, I'm the wrong hire.
- The problem is purely clinical, or purely financial. A single-discipline question is usually cheaper to answer with a single-discipline specialist.
- You need it billed to a payer, or argued in court. This practice does neither. Patient care and medical-legal work run under separate entities.
Who you'd be hiring
One person. The one you talked to.
No associates, no analyst bench, no one to hand your work down to. The person who scopes the engagement is the person who does it — which is the entire reason to hire a practice this size instead of a firm.
I still practice. I still own and run a clinical business across several states, sign the payroll, and carry the same licensure, documentation, and margin pressure my clients do. That's the part most consultants can't offer: recommendations from someone who has to implement the same kind of thing on Monday.
I'll tell you when the answer is “don't do this.” It's the most valuable thing I sell, and it's usually the cheapest.
CredentialsAhmad Rashid, DPM
- Clinical
- Doctor of Podiatric Medicine — board certified, Diplomate of the American Board of Podiatric Medicine. Licensed in multiple states, in active practice.
- Fellowship
- FFPM RCPSG — Fellow of the Faculty of Podiatric Medicine, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.
- Financial
- MS, Accounting — University of Massachusetts Amherst, Isenberg School of Management.
- Quality
- ABQAURP member — health care quality, utilization management, and peer review. Working experience in utilization and chart review.
- Operator
- Owner and principal of a multi-site clinical practice spanning facility-based care and telehealth.
Start a conversation
Tell me what isn't working.
A first call runs 30 minutes and costs nothing. If I'm not the right person for it, you'll hear that on the call rather than after an invoice.