NFL Cheerleader turned EMPA | Award-winning Health Leader | Functional Medicine Advocate | International Speaker | Media Contributor | Podcaster Extraordinaire 😉

Summer 2021. I was practicing medicine in the ER drowning in lockdowns, mandates, and the special kind of despair that comes from watching a system you believed in eat itself alive.

I'd spent years in the trenches — running CDC's National Diabetes Prevention Program across four states, overseeing clinical research with Hopkins, working on the very drug trials that were shaping policy in real-time, and then treating patients in hallways who were bearing the brunt of a completely failed 'public health response' I'd always believed would save us. 

I felt powerless to fix what was broken.

So I did what any rational person would do. I started posting on LinkedIn after 14 hour night shifts with zero followers, zero strategy, and a whole lot of opinions about everything that was wrong with American healthcare.

(Spoiler: it was a lot.)

What happened next still doesn't make sense to me.

Platform reach of 300K+ weekly. A healthcare communications firm Sims Tillirson & I built from nothing. Press access covering FDA and HHS — which, for a policy nerd who geeks out over price transparency and regulatory reform, is basically the Super Bowl.

I'm not a marketing genius. I didn't have a plan. I just showed up, told the truth in plain English, and refused to shut up about fixing healthcare.

Turns out that's the job.

Translating complex policy into stories real people understand. Building coalitions of credible voices. Setting narratives instead of just responding to them.

Your clinical expertise is the competitive advantage. The system just never told you that.

Nobody is coming to save American healthcare except us. 

LFG.

Tiffany Ryder

At 21, a doctor told me I had PCOS and pre-diabetes and then handed me a Metformin prescription.

“This is just what you’ll have to live with,” she said. So I did. Until I didn’t.

(Turns out eating real food and moving your body is a treatment plan. Who knew?)

But that was the first time a strange thought crossed my mind. 

Maybe the people who say they know how this works… don’t actually know anything about how this works.

Hmm.

Years later — after the NFL, foreign medical school, PA school, the ER, and COVID — I read The Price We Pay by Dr. Marty Makary and suddenly understood things I hadn’t been able to articulate before.

- Why I’d been handed a pill instead of a lifestyle.
- Why my employment contract said I wasn’t allowed to tell patients about the clinic across the street.
- And 1000 other horrific things about the system we call ‘health care’.

(I’m still looking for a word to describe it that doesn’t start with an F-, but haven’t found one yet)

Then a realization crystallized... I could keep saving people one-by-one in the ER, but if I did, I could never fix what was actually breaking them. So I left.

And that’s the real story behind this episode- the full, messy, nonlinear version — the NFL years, the diagnosis that reversed itself, the ER shifts where the incentives finally became impossible to ignore, and the moment I realized something most clinicians eventually confront:

We can hold someone’s hand. We can stabilize them. 

Sometimes we can even save them.

But we can’t repair a system that was never designed for patients to win.

And that raises a much bigger question…Why are patients losing in the first place?

Full episode here: https://lnkd.in/eXFiUsQx

NFL Cheerleader to ER. Independent Media giving DC health policy a voice (and a personality). The government is not my doctor.

People always ask me if CrowdHealth is the real thing. After 2 years of health care outside the Matrix - totally 'uninsured'-  my answer is…

Yup. 

Best decision I ever made: https://lnkd.in/ey-i88DX

What's not to love? 

We asked FDA to say no to Pharma.
I do not mean we asked politely.

I mean we built a regulatory agency whose entire function is to tell the most profitable industry in the world that it cannot do what it wants. 

We staffed it. Funded it. Gave it authority. 
We called it public health. The name is the thing we did.

We did not build anything to protect it when Pharma pushed back.
Pharma pushed back. 

This was not a surprise. Or a betrayal. A company told no by a regulator will attempt to remove the regulator. 

This is not corruption. This is a business model. This is the norm.

Pharma funds media. Provides their operating budget. Pharmaceutical advertising is the financial infrastructure of American health journalism. 

News on FDA is brought to you by the companies the FDA regulates. 
This is disclosed in fine print. The fine print is the point.

When FDA says no, the media covers FDA. The coverage is not about the regulation. The coverage is about the regulator.

A regulation can be debated on merits. A regulator can be destroyed on character. Only one of those is reversible.

Prasad’s job is to tell Pharma no. The media’s job is to make that impossible. They ran sexual harassment allegations. The allegations didn’t exist. The original story ran everywhere. The correction came 19 days later. 

19 days is not a correction. 19 days is a strategy. Prasad is leaving. The strategy worked.

Marty Makary’s job is to tell Pharma no. The media is coming for Marty Makary. The playbook does not change. The strategy works.

We watch this happen. We call it bias. We describe it in great detail to people who already understand. 

Pharma is not threatened by people who understand what Pharma is doing. Understanding the mechanism is not the same as breaking it. 

Two things break the mechanism. The mechanism is not broken.

Leadership cover breaks it. The entire admin standing behind the regulator when the regulator says no. 

Not a statement. Not a spokesperson. A wall. 

FDA leaders who will not be abandoned can hold the line. FDA leaders who are not sure must manage exposure instead. They must do as much good as they can without being shown the door. This is a rational response. 

Public outcry works if it's loud enough to be unavoidable. Unavoidable means abandoning the regulator costs more than protecting industry. Unavoidable means silence is no longer politically safe.

Neither eliminates attacks. Attacks don’t need to be eliminated. Attacks need to be survivable; public outcry makes them so.

You have a choice.

You can know, & know that you know it, & watch what happens next. 

The show is well-produced. Outrage cycles are timed. The corrections run quietly 19 days later, if you’re lucky. 

There is a version where you live a comfortable life and FDA never regulates anything that matters & you never have to do anything.

Or you can get loud enough that protecting Pharma costs more than it's worth.

Those are the only two options. Pick one.

You’re 10 years into practice, earning more than ever, but have zero clue how to triage your money...and it’s quietly costing you millions in missed opportunities.

You've grinded through school, clinicals, board exams, and endless shifts.
You and your spouse bring in $300,000.
Better yet, doing work that actually matters.

But somehow, your finances still feel like a dumpster fire.

You’ve got savings, but no system.
Insurance, but no idea how it works.
Student loans with no end in sight. 

That’s where we step in.

We help healthcare professionals turn high income into a clearer financial strategy — without sacrificing your time. 

✅ Create a clear plan to tackle student loans
✅ Build a system that helps your savings work more efficiently
✅ Explore ways to get retirement on track
✅ Protect your income with true own-occupation coverage

"As a new professional out in the workforce, it was exciting to receive those first few paychecks. But then the question arose. What should I do with my money? How do I invest? How do I grow my money for the future? As a person whose main focus was medical schooling for the last 5 years, I did not have the knowledge base to answer these types of finance questions that were so important for my future. Working with Kyle has given us the opportunity to grow our money and invest in our future. But apart from the future, he also focuses on the present. Always inquiring about what major life events are coming up that we need to have money ready for. It is nice to have a financial planner who is concentrated on our future but also supports us in our daily living. With Kyle, there is peace of mind that our money is not sedentary but growing. He ensures that we understand each step he is taking to grow our money that we have worked so hard for. He is dedicated to us and wants what is best for us." Emily, PA-C*

Bottom line, we'll help you build a structure designed to bring you peace of mind, freedom, and a sense of control over the life you’re working so hard for.

If you’re ready to trade financial stress for greater financial clarity & stability, we should talk.

Message me CHECK-UP for more details.

📩 Not ready? Get my free weekly insights here:
 https://www.library-messages.com/dab188ee-381a-413e-b407-e1c4434c8183/

*No compensation was paid to this client for their testimonial. Their experience may not represent the experience of others nor predict future results.
2025-8431403.1 Exp 10/2026
/COMPLIANCE:2025-5493/

Kyle Richert

Physician Associates might no longer be considered a “professional degree.”

I haven’t said anything about this yet.

But it’s probably time to throw my hat in the ring.

For the past several months, the Department of Education has been considering a rule change that would exclude PAs from the definition of a professional degree for federal loan purposes.

The American Academy of Physician Associates has already submitted formal comments pushing back, and thousands of PAs and supporters have signed the petition circulating across the profession.

I added my name as well.

Because decisions like this don’t just affect students.

They affect the entire healthcare system.

As someone who works closely with PAs across the country, I see firsthand the role they play in expanding access to care and improving patient outcomes.

Unfortunately, the world, and politicians especially, tend to speak one language: money.

So let’s talk about the math.

Limiting federal loan access for future PA students is being framed as a cost control measure.

But the research on healthcare delivery suggests the opposite effect.

When PAs are integrated into care teams, we consistently see strong patient outcomes, improved access to care, and lower overall healthcare costs.

PAs help close provider shortages.
They expand access to primary care.
They reduce strain on the system.

Now think about what happens if we make it harder for students to become PAs.

Fewer students will be able to afford PA school.

Fewer providers enter the workforce.

Access to care shrinks.

Costs rise.

The math is simple.

Invest in PAs
Better patient outcomes and lower care costs

Restrict the pipeline of PAs
Higher costs and worse access for patients

If the goal is to control healthcare spending while maintaining quality care, policies that support the PA profession move us closer to that outcome.

Not further away.

Crush student debt without feeling broke | Fiduciary Advisor for Healthcare Professionals | Guest Lecturer at 40+ Graduate & Doctoral Healthcare Programs Nationwide

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Dear 23 yr old me…I know it sucks right now.

But dang it, it gets better. 

Right now, you’re thinking about quitting because you’re:

-making 100+ cold calls a day. 
-getting rejected 24/7.
-a baby faced kid with no money trying to help people manage theirs.

The first year of running your practice is the closest thing to death you’ll experience. 

But you won’t die. You won’t.

Don’t quit. 

You over estimate what you can get done in a year and dramtically under estimate what you can get done in a decade.

Trust me. 

Soon, you’ll make more in a month than you did the last twelve months. 

You’ll work with hundreds of healthcare professionals who trust you with the most important parts of their financial lives.

You’ll build a practice that lets you control your time.

You’ll take your family on trips you once thought were out of reach.

You’ll stand in front of classrooms full of PA, DNP, and Perfusion students teaching them how money actually works.

And one day you’ll look back and realize something funny.

None of it happened because you were the smartest.

It happened because you simply refused to quit on the days it would have been easiest to.

Keep going.

Year one feels like survival.

But decade one?

That’s where the magic shows up.

Met with an ER doc making $64k. When he finishes residency in two years, his income will jump to $350k. Shortly after, he wants to get engaged/married. Here's how we're managing Roth vs. Traditional contributions. 

1. Max out $7,500 per year to his Roth IRA

For the next two years, while his income is the lowest it will likely ever be. Keep the investments simple. Nothing fancy, just want to get the compound interest curve going. No-load target-date funds to start. 

2. Contribute up to (not above) the company match into his Roth 403(b).

Get some additional money into a Roth environment while earnings are low. Educated him on the fund options in his employer plan, while saving any additional free money into savings accounts for liquidity. 

3. Rollover over Roth 403(b) into his Roth IRA once he finishes his residency. 

He plans to move back home after his residency. He'll be closer to family with better job opportunities. He'll have more control over the investment strategy by moving those funds to his Roth IRA. 

4. Once his income jumps almost $300k, switch to traditional contributions and max out his 403(b) while he's still a single filer. 

There is a significant income discrepancy between him and his girlfriend (she's a PA). Playing with the difference between single vs. married filing jointly tax brackets can save him on taxes. 

5. After they're married, execute an in-plan conversion of his traditional 403(b) contributions to the Roth 403(b). 

He'll owe taxes on the conversion amount, but converting after they're married will allow him to move more of his traditional contributions into lower brackets. 

We're just getting started, but this is a solid roadmap for budding medical residents.

In Scottsdale, AZ for my firm’s leaders club 

But still finding it hard to unplug.

God built me with an extra gear. I can consistently keep pushing, regardless of how I feel toward a task or deadline, to get stuff done.

It serves me well in a lot of ways.

But sometimes it leaves me feeling… itchy.

Like if I slow down for even a minute, something important is going to slip.

Emails unanswered.
Opportunities missed.
Momentum lost.

The irony is that the very thing that helps you build something can also make it hard to step away from it.

So today I’m trying something different.

Letting the phone sit a little longer.
Taking the walk.
Being present for the conversation in front of me instead of the task waiting behind me.

Work will still be there tomorrow.

The moment you’re in right now won’t be.

taplio

The Battle

Tiffany Ryder

Kyle Richert

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taplio

The Battle

Tiffany Ryder

Kyle Richert

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Tiffany Ryder's LinkedIn Performance

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