KZA’S FALL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT LEADERSHIP SUMMIT
Ascend 2026
Thriving in Today’s Healthcare Environment
Practical strategies for financial strength, operational excellence, and sustainable growth.
Friday, November 6, 2026 • 8:00am – 4:00pm CT • 100% Virtual — Attend Live From Anywhere
Celebrating America's 250th: save $250 on the Summit when you also attend Nashville.
Important Dates
BUILT FOR THE PEOPLE WHO RUN THE PRACTICE
One Day. Seven Sessions. A Stronger Practice.
The Fall Practice Management Leadership Summit is KZA's executive-level companion to our national coding conferences — a single, intensive, fully virtual day for administrators, practice executives, and physician leaders focused on the business of running a surgical practice: margins, metrics, technology, staffing, and leadership. No flights, no hotel — just seven hours of high-value content, live from your desk.
Executive-Level Content
No coding drills here. Every session targets the decisions leaders own: financial performance, dashboards, technology ROI, care-team design, hiring, and hard conversations.
Seven Focused Hours, Zero Travel
A tightly built one-day virtual agenda — seven one-hour sessions moving from financial fundamentals through team design and growth to leadership — with no airfare, hotel, or days out of the office.
KZA Consultants, Real Practices
Learn from consultants who spend their weeks inside surgical practices nationwide — bringing benchmarks, war stories, and frameworks that work in the real world.
Live and Interactive
Bring your real questions. Every session includes live Q&A, and moderated chat connects you with practice administrators and physician leaders from surgical practices nationwide.
Tools You'll Use Monday
Leave with KPI definitions, dashboard templates, staffing models, ROI worksheets, and conversation frameworks you can put to work the week you return.
Pairs With Nashville
Send your coding team to Elevate in Nashville and your leadership team to the Summit — and save $250 with our America 250 celebration offer.
Celebrate 250 Years of Independence — and Declare Independence From Thin Margins.
Register for the Fall Leadership Summit alongside a Nashville 2026 two-day or three-day conference package and take $250 off your Summit registration. The two registrations don't have to be the same person — send your coder to Nashville and your administrator to the Summit.
Offer ends July 31, 2026. Qualifying Nashville packages: Two Full Days or Full Conference (3-Day). See full terms & conditions.
THE DAY AT A GLANCE
Summit Agenda
How does a practice thrive? Measure it. Staff it. Fill it. Lead it. The day moves through those four movements with a rotating slate of presenters — no two consecutive sessions from the same speaker — opening with the true cost of an empty chair, turning to the human side of leadership right after lunch, and closing with a forward look at the technology that pays for itself.
Session Details
The Practice Accelerator: Filling Schedules, Launching Services, and Scaling New Providers
We open the day where the money leaks out: an empty appointment slot is revenue you never get back. Starting from the true, high cost of an empty chair, this session delivers actionable marketing frameworks to eliminate empty slots, cross-sell new high-margin procedures to the patients you already have, and get new providers fully booked in under 60 days.
As a result of attending, participants will be able to…
- Quantify the high cost of an empty chair — per slot, per provider, per year
- Apply proven marketing frameworks to eliminate schedule gaps
- Launch and cross-sell high-margin services to your existing patient base
- Ramp new providers to full schedules in under 60 days
Building a Modern Care Team
Access, margin, and clinician well-being aren't competing goals — they're the outputs of a well-designed care team. This session shows how to distribute work across physicians, APPs, and support clinicians so every team member practices at the top of their license, and how to size and structure that team for your actual patient population.
As a result of attending, participants will be able to…
- Design a team-based care model where license-appropriate work flows to the right team member
- Quantify access and capacity using panel size, visit demand, and provider-mix modeling to set the right physician-to-APP ratio
- Implement scheduling models, in-basket and documentation offloading, and role redesign that improve work-life balance without sacrificing access or margin
- Align compensation and governance so team-based care is rewarded, APP roles are integrated rather than bolted on, and the model is sustainable
Financial Health Check: Understanding the Metrics That Matter
Before you can improve the numbers, you have to know which ones matter — and what they're telling you. This session builds a shared financial vocabulary for practice leaders: what each core metric measures, what "good" looks like for a surgical practice, and what to do when a number moves the wrong way. We'll cover operating margin, cost per encounter, provider productivity, days in A/R, net collection rate, and EBITDA and practice valuation.
As a result of attending, participants will be able to…
- Define and calculate the six financial metrics every practice leader should track
- Benchmark practice performance against specialty norms and spot early warning signs in A/R and collections trends
- Connect day-to-day operational decisions to operating margin
- Explain how EBITDA drives practice valuation — and why it matters even if you never plan to sell
The People Equation: Hiring, Retention, and Incentives That Actually Work
Every vacant desk and every mis-hire has a price tag — and most practices have never calculated it. This session puts real numbers on vacancy and turnover, then walks through structured, competency-based recruitment, retention tactics that go beyond compensation, and incentive structures that reward the right behaviors while staying inside the legal guardrails.
As a result of attending, participants will be able to…
- Calculate the true cost of a vacant or mis-hired position and apply structured, competency-based recruitment to clinical and non-clinical roles
- Identify the primary drivers of staff turnover and implement targeted retention tactics — career laddering, stay interviews, and workload and management levers
- Design compliant incentive structures for office staff, navigating FLSA mechanics for non-exempt employees and Stark/AKS guardrails on anything touching referrals or designated health services
- Match organizational structure and key leadership roles to practice size and revenue — and recognize the inflection points that call for new management layers
The Evolved Leader: Navigating Difficult Conversations with Empathy and Effectiveness
Coming straight out of lunch — and straight off the People Equation — this session takes up the human side of everything the morning put in place. Because every strategy on today’s agenda ultimately runs through one channel: how you communicate. We pair reflective leadership practice — building the self-awareness to see how you actually show up — with practical, step-by-step skills for the conversations leaders avoid: performance problems, conflict between team members, and delivering hard news to physicians and staff.
As a result of attending, participants will be able to…
- Apply reflective and reflexive practices that build leadership self-awareness
- Structure and lead difficult conversations with staff, colleagues, and physicians
- Use practical frameworks for feedback, conflict, and accountability discussions
- Build day-to-day communication habits that earn trust across the practice
Executive Workshop: Creating Dashboards Leaders Actually Use
Data isn't a strategy — a dashboard your leadership team actually opens is. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll roll up our sleeves and distill the data behind every session today — financial, operational, workforce, access, and compliance — into a one-page executive view that drives Monday-morning decisions instead of gathering dust in a shared drive.
As a result of attending, participants will be able to…
- Select the KPIs that belong on an executive dashboard — and recognize the ones that don't
- Organize metrics across five domains: financial, operational, patient access, workforce, and compliance
- Design dashboard views tuned to physician, administrator, and board audiences
- Establish a review cadence and ownership model that turns dashboards into decisions
Tech That Delivers: Leveraging Technology to Increase Revenue
Technology should pay for itself. This session maps today's digital healthcare landscape and shows where the right tools genuinely enhance the patient experience, streamline clinical workflows, and add revenue — and how to measure the return before and after you buy, so vendor promises meet practice reality.
As a result of attending, participants will be able to…
- Navigate the digital healthcare landscape and evaluate vendor claims with confidence
- Identify technologies that measurably enhance the patient experience from scheduling to follow-up
- Streamline clinical workflows without adding clicks for clinicians
- Build a simple ROI model for any technology purchase — and hold it accountable after go-live
KZA Summit Speakers
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Alicia Anderson
BS, AAS
Practice growth strategist — technology ROI, patient experience, and marketing frameworks that fill schedules.
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Jennifer Cabrera
PA-C, MSPA, MPH
Financial metrics and executive dashboards — turning practice data into decisions leaders can act on.
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Matthew Shortt
PA-C, MBA
Care-team design, staffing economics, and compensation and governance models that make team-based care sustainable.
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Olivia Wolf
MBA, CPC
Leadership development and communication — empathy, self-awareness, and the difficult conversations leaders must own.
How the Virtual Summit Works
Attend From Anywhere
Join live from your desk - all you need is a browser. Log-in details arrive after registration.
Live Q&A Every Session
Ask our consultants your real questions in real time, with moderated chat throughout the day.
Downloadable Toolkit
KPI definitions, dashboard templates, staffing models, and conversation frameworks - yours to keep and use.
On-Demand Replay
Registration includes on-demand recording access for 30 days after the Summit.
REGISTRATION
Registration and payment are handled through KZA's education portal. You'll complete checkout on educate.kzanow.com.
Pricing
Early Bird
$595
July 1 – August 31, 2026. Register early and save.
Summit + Nashville Attendee
$445
$695 standard rate - $250 with a qualifying Nashville two-day or three-day package. Doesn't have to be the same attendee. Not combinable with early-bird pricing. Ends July 31.
Standard Registration
$695
Full-day live virtual access, downloadable toolkit, and 30-day on-demand replay.
Lead the Practice Your Physicians Deserve.
Seven sessions. One virtual day. Measure it, staff it, fill it, lead it — brought together by the consultants surgical practices have trusted for more than 40 years. The America 250 offer ends July 31 and early-bird pricing ends August 31 — register today and lock in your savings
Don’t forget: $250 off when you also attend Nashville.
Contact Us for Team Rates
Tell us a little about your practice and how many people you'd like to register, and we'll follow up with team pricing within one business day.
BRING YOUR WHOLE LEADERSHIP TEAM
Feedback from Past Conference Attendees
America 250 Offer — Terms & Conditions
The offer. In celebration of the United States' 250th anniversary, receive $250 off one (1) Fall Practice Management Leadership Summit registration when purchased in conjunction with a qualifying KZA Nashville 2026 National Conference registration.
Qualifying Nashville packages. Two Full Days ($1,999) or Full Conference three-day bundle ($2,299) only. Half-day and single full-day Nashville registrations do not qualify.
Discount applies to the Summit only. The $250 is deducted from the Summit registration fee and does not reduce Nashville conference pricing.
Different attendees welcome. The Summit and Nashville registrations do not need to be for the same individual; however, both registrations must be purchased by the same organization. KZA will verify qualifying purchases and apply the discount.
One discount per qualifying package. Each qualifying Nashville package unlocks one $250 Summit discount. Organizations purchasing multiple qualifying packages may apply one discount per package, up to one per Summit registration.
Offer period. Valid for purchases made between July 1, 2026 and July 31, 2026. Not retroactive to registrations purchased before the offer period.
Combinability. This offer may not be combined with any other discount, promotion, or promo code, including Summit early-bird pricing. The $250 discount is applied to the standard Summit registration rate.
Cancellations. If the qualifying Nashville registration is canceled or refunded, the $250 discount is forfeited and the discounted amount becomes due on the Summit registration (or will be deducted from any refund owed). Standard KZA cancellation policies apply to both events.
No cash value. The discount has no cash or credit value, is non-transferable, and cannot be exchanged.
Modifications. KZA reserves the right to modify or discontinue this promotion at any time. Questions? Contact us.