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For the first time since launching this little project, I took a few weeks off from writing. It wasn’t planned, but it was a nice break. I even took back-to-back Fridays off work. Experimenting with a 32-hour workweek? Maybe. We have been busy hiking, swimming, exercising, and yes, even golfing. We also squeezed in a little trip to Cape Cod. But it’s time to get back to work here at Max Out of Pocket.

I started the ‘Max’s Back Pocket’ series during the peak of the pandemic lockdown. People were being sent home from work and the stock market appeared to be crashing. It seemed like a good way to organize my thoughts during a crazy time while also networking with other bloggers. I kept it up for 16 weeks, which was double my initial commitment of 8 weeks. Overall, I enjoyed it, and it was nice to check in weekly.

But I may re-think the weekly frequency at some point. Initially, I thought I would eventually cut this down to monthly, or even every two weeks on payday. Time will tell, but I don’t anticipate I will eliminate the series altogether. It’s fun. I am just looking for some time to focus on a few other things, so I need to build in some balance. I don’t want to be a professional content curator.

With that, welcome to the 17th edition of Max’s Back Pocket.

Max’s Back Pocket

Over the last several years, I have absorbed a ton of great content from a lot of talented people in and around the internet. Several of those ideas even got drawn into my personal finance strategy. Some of these writers are professionals, but a lot of them are just amateurs throwing their weight around in a random niche. I like to think I am pretty good at the intersection of healthcare and personal finance, but there are plenty of people out there much smarter than me.

Up until now, most of these ideas just landed in my back pocket. There they would sit for my own benefit whenever I needed them. They were rarely shared or exchanged with anyone in my personal network. These days, that is no longer the case. Here at the intersection of healthcare and personal finance, Max will start scouring the entire internet for these ideas in a weekly effort to not only spread but recognize the wealth of knowledge that is out there. This weekly check-in will also give me an excuse to catch up on what’s going on around here more often. What are we calling this pandemic inspired idiomatic experiment?

Max’s Back Pocket.

Personal Finance

Yesterday was payday, so I made my usual addition to my medical office building portfolio. I have been adding to this portfolio every two weeks for well over a year at this point.

It just so happens I received my quarterly dividend from Physicians Realty Trust yesterday as well. Between the three accounts that I keep my medical office buildings in, it came out to $533.37 in passive income for July.

So I essentially re-invested almost my entire dividend payment right back into Physicians Realty Trust. Those 30 new shares are projected to net me $27.60 in passive income over the next year.

The dividends that hit my individual brokerage account will be taxed this year, the dividends that hit my Traditional IRA are tax-deferred, and the dividends that hit my Roth IRA will never be taxed.

The last I checked my 3-stock medical office building portfolio is worth $65,000 and should kick off about $3,686 in dividends over the next year. Keep in mind, this is part of my “speculative” allocation and most of my portfolio lives in index funds.

$3,686 in passive income annually is nice, but it’s nothing compared to what Bob over at Tawcan has put together over the years. Bob has amassed a dividend portfolio that generates over $2,100 in passive dividends per month. His portfolio is much more diversified and built for the long haul. Check out his June update here.

Bob lives in Vancouver, Canada. Mrs. Max OOP is Canadian and eventually wants to move us back to Canada, so I like to keep an eye on Canadian bloggers.

Finally, I was disappointed to find out a few weeks ago that Kim from The Frugal Engineers closed down her site. She did a nice guest post here on how to pandemic proof your finances several months ago. She is moving on to bigger and better things, but hopefully, we can stay in touch over email.

Healthcare

Things are going really well for me at work right now. The pandemic essentially canceled all meetings that were already pretty useless in the first place. As a result, my productivity has gone through the roof.

I just closed out week one of a two-week remote healthcare conference. It goes from 1-4 pm every day and is quality content. Unfortunately, the conference is not in person this year, so I have not been able to completely unplug and recharge like I did last year. Man, I really liked that hotel.

That said, I have been coming home from work and participating remotely from my couch. I thought getting out of the office would be a good strategy to make sure I pay attention and don’t work/check email during the conference. It has been a nice break from my normal routine.

My new friends over at #HCLDR had their weekly tweet chat on Tuesday. I was unable to attend this week, but they had a dynamic discussion. Thankfully, I was able to check out some of the highlights on Twitter the next day.

Next week they are covering the keys to maintaining virtual care’s momentum. Telehealth is something I have taken some interest in on the finance side of healthcare. We did a deep dive into the billing a few months back so it should be a great discussion. Join us on Tuesday, July 21st if you are interested!

Never Events

Have you ever wondered what Medicare considers a “Never Event” in the hospital? Doing a lab test on the wrong patient is certainly concerning, but it isn’t considered a “Never Event”. It has to be an invasive procedure and something we never want to see happen.

Medicare doesn’t cover “never events”:

A surgical or other invasive procedure done in error including:

1⃣A wrong procedure on the patient
2⃣The correct procedure, wrong body part
3⃣The correct procedure on the wrong patient

See why they call them “never events”?

— Max (@maxoutofpocket) July 15, 2020

That said, even if you have a noninvasive (like maybe a lab test) test performed that was not ordered by your doctor, I would challenge the billing. It’s not necessarily something you would sue over, but at the very least you and your insurance shouldn’t be billed for it.

Life

As I mentioned, Mrs. Max OOP and I have been quite busy. I took back-to-back Fridays off work. I am carefully managing my favorite benefit – paid time off. There is a need to make sure I don’t go over my cap of 281 hours, otherwise, I will stop accumulating time off.

During my little hiatus from writing, we hit up Cape Cod for the first time, checked off another 4,000 footer in New Hampshire, and had family in town for three days. All while staying appropriately socially distanced.

I might have picked up a bad habit on the Cape. It’s called golfing. We golfed twice last year for the first time and now twice this year. My game seems to be improving exponentially and I am finding it slightly addictive. Luckily, I have been borrowing clubs and need to give them back next week, so hopefully, that will nip the habit.

Until then, we have a 3 pm tee-time set for today here in town.

How have you been?