You can pull up the latest data on your phone while you wait for coffee. So why leave your practice for a meeting? On Life of Flow, I sat down with Rich Dubin, founder and publisher of Lower Extremity Review and the organizer behind lerEXPO. The question we kept pushing: what should a conference give a physician that a screen can't?
Vascular Hunger Games: What Makes a Medical Meeting Worth Your Time?
Rich Dubin of Lower Extremity Review and lerEXPO on what makes a medical meeting worth your time, and the case tournament behind the Vascular Hunger Games.
Watch The Episode
Vascular Hunger Games: What Makes a Medical Meeting Worth Your Time?, LOF #135 of Life of Flow, hosted by Dr. Lucas Ferrer and Dr. Miguel Montero-Baker.
What's A Podiatrist?
In 1989, a podiatrist who published a magazine called Current Podiatry offered Rich a job selling ads. Rich said yes. Then he asked what a podiatrist was.
He later helped start Biomechanics, which brought podiatry, ortho, PT, vascular and wound care into one publication. People said it couldn't be done. In 2009 he launched Lower Extremity Review, and in 2019 he started lerEXPO for online continuing education.
He says they've run more than 200 events, with about 75 this year.
The Exhibit Hall Math
Rich says he's been to four or five hundred conferences. The complaints don't change. No ROI. The same speaker giving the same talk from 10 years ago.
One client, he says, spent $35,000 on a national meeting in Nashville and talked to five doctors in three days.
He's still a handshake and hug guy. He just doesn't think human connection needs a giant annual conference.
In A Circle, Off The Stage
Miguel gave about 20 years to the meeting circuit. At his peak he was out every other week. For the last two years he's said no to almost everything.
What still pulls him in is a small, focused room. Five people who only do deep venous arterialization, geeking out for a day, everyone in a circle. And the surgeon in the back who has done a hundred cases finally gets to speak.
Rich's view is that hierarchy doesn't work.
Where we landed: the value is experience.
The Hunger Games Format
One format Rich likes is a tournament. Five-minute cases. The audience votes on who moves on. Four rounds, 16 physicians. His limb salvage tournament runs on podiatry and ortho and drew 400 attendees last year.
We started sketching a vascular version on the spot. That's where the episode got its name.
He also wants online events to feed into hands-on labs, so the people who want to go deeper can.
What I'd Pay For
For me, it's the business side. I'd want a mastermind built around independent physicians who've built practices that work. Miguel named the problems worth the room: cash flow, revenue-cycle management, a phone tree that's failing.
I said on the show I'd pay to be part of that.
To be clear, these are ideas from the conversation. Nobody has announced a course or an event.
The Takeaway
A meeting earns its spot on your calendar when it gives you judgment you can't search for.
The rest fits on a phone.