About GrowInfectiousDisease
ID physicians run economically complex practices on training that covered none of it.
The specialty's workforce problem is, at root, an economics problem. This site is about the half nobody taught.
- Explain the mechanicsHow the money actually moves, written once and properly.
- Publish the toolsFree, ungated, and running entirely in your browser.
- Be explicit about what we do not knowNo rate, cost or margin we have not licensed and verified.
Infectious disease consistently ranks near the bottom of physician compensation surveys, reports among the lowest satisfaction with compensation of any specialty, and has watched fellowship positions go unfilled for more than a decade. At the same time, ID physicians deliver a large share of their value through work the payment system does not measure: stewardship, prevention, curbside consultation, OPAT coordination, and the admissions that never happen.
That gap between value delivered and value captured is not something an individual physician can fix. But a great deal of it is recoverable at the practice level — by pricing institutional services that are currently given away, by designing infusion and OPAT programs that are financially survivable rather than merely clinically excellent, and by running a revenue cycle built for drug-heavy claims rather than borrowed from a specialty that does not have them.
This site is built around one editorial rule: explain the mechanics, publish the tools, and be explicit about what we do not know. We do not print drug acquisition costs, payment rates or margin figures, because those vary by drug, purchasing arrangement, quarter and payer — any number we published would be wrong for your practice. The calculators take your numbers instead.
GrowInfectiousDisease is published by Persistex, a Massachusetts-based medical billing, coding and revenue cycle management firm working with independent practices across New England and nationwide. Persistex funds this resource because practices that understand their own economics make better partners — and because some of the people who use these tools will want help acting on what they find. There is no gate on any tool and no email required to see a result. If the site is only useful when it is selling something, it has failed at the thing it was built to do.
Editorial rules
The six rules this site is written under
Physician-facing business content has a credibility problem, largely because so much of it is marketing with a citation glued on. These are the rules we hold ourselves to — published so you can hold us to them.
- 1
We do not invent numbers
No reimbursement rates, Medicare rates, payer rates, procedure margins, physician income figures, drug costs, equipment costs, denial rates or industry statistics are fabricated. Where a figure would be useful and we have not licensed and verified it, we say so and leave the space empty.
- 2
Calculator defaults are labelled illustrative
Every tool opens with example inputs marked as illustrative assumptions, not validated data. The arithmetic is real and the methodology is published on each tool page; the starting values are placeholders for yours.
- 3
Claims carry sources
Where we cite research, policy or reporting, the source is linked at the foot of the section. If we cannot source it, we do not assert it.
- 4
Nothing is gated
No tool requires an email to return a result. No article is locked behind a form. Nothing you enter into a calculator is transmitted or stored — the arithmetic runs in your browser.
- 5
No article is written to sell a service
Persistex pathways appear where they are genuinely relevant — after a revenue-cycle assessment, at the end of an RCM topic — and are absent everywhere else.
- 6
We stay in our lane
Nothing here is medical, legal, tax or investment advice. Regulatory, contracting and compliance questions are flagged as requiring qualified counsel, because they do.
The relationship
Powered by Persistex
Persistex Medical Billing & Coding is a Massachusetts-based firm providing medical billing, medical coding and revenue cycle management to independent practices across New England and nationwide. Its team holds CPC, CPB, RHIT and CCS credentials, and it operates under HIPAA-compliant processes with transparent reporting.
Persistex publishes and funds GrowInfectiousDisease. That is stated in the header, the footer and here, because a resource that hides its sponsor does not deserve to be trusted on anything else.
What Persistex does not do is set the editorial line. The tools do not steer toward a conclusion that requires buying something. The articles describe things you can do yourself, in the order you should do them. If your revenue cycle is healthy, the RCM Health Check will tell you so, and there is no version of that result that becomes a sales pitch.
The commercial logic is straightforward and worth being open about: a proportion of the physicians and administrators who use these tools will decide they want help acting on what they find, and Persistex would like to be the obvious place to ask. That works only if the resource is genuinely useful first.
If you want help
Analyze My ID Practice
This is a conversation about your actual claims, denial and payment data — not a demo. It is the point at which the resource stops being self-service and Persistex becomes involved, and it is entirely optional.