The Operator

The Operator is a healthcare business podcast about how clinics, platforms, and providers grow, scale, and sometimes fail.

Hosted by Larry Benz, this show breaks down private equity in healthcare, clinic ownership, leadership, compensation models, and the real-world decisions behind building health...

Recent Past Episodes

View all

Sept. 22, 2026

Called to Care Spotlight: AI Gave Clinicians Time Back. Who Gets It?

The efficiency isn’t the point. AI can document faster, process more information, support clinical decisions, and remove work clinicians once had to do manually. But Larry Benz raises the more important question: What happens to the time technology gives back? In this episode, Larry talks with Alex Bendersky about the rapidly changing role of AI in physical therapy and rehabilitation. They move beyond the usual conversation about tools and features to examine how AI changes the actual clinica

Listen to the Episode

Sept. 15, 2026

Called to Care Spotlight: What If Caring More Prevents Burnout?

What if one of healthcare’s most accepted ideas about burnout is backwards? Clinicians are often taught, formally or informally, that caring too deeply creates vulnerability. Keep some distance. Don't get too attached. Protect yourself. In this episode, Heidi Jannenga joins Larry Benz for a much broader conversation about what actually keeps people in healthcare. Heidi is the founder of WebPT and the Rizing Tide Foundation, an organization supporting future physical therapists through scholar

Listen to the Episode

Sept. 10, 2026

The Growth You Buy vs. the Growth You Earn: Measuring Patient Trust

Most healthcare organizations can tell you exactly how much they spend acquiring a patient. Far fewer can tell you how many patients arrive because someone already trusts them. That difference may reveal more about the strength of a healthcare business than another marketing dashboard ever will. In this episode of The Operator, Jimmy McKay and Larry Benz examine a deceptively simple metric: the percentage of new patients who come from friends, family, or former patients. Larry explains why di

Listen to the Episode

Sept. 8, 2026

What If Caring More Protects You From Burnout?

What if healthcare's prescription for clinician burnout has been partly backwards? For years, clinicians have been warned about compassion fatigue and encouraged to create emotional distance from their patients. Larry Benz says newer research complicates that story. In this special conversation, longtime friend and collaborator Tim Flynn joins Larry to explore the ideas behind the newly updated edition of Called to Care. Their conversation begins with more than four decades of shared history

Listen to the Episode

Sept. 3, 2026

Who Gets the First Vote? Clinical Judgment, Coverage, and Learned Helplessness

Clinicians are trained to answer one question: What does this patient need? But once they enter practice, another voice often enters the room: What will insurance cover? The problem is not that coverage exists. The problem begins when coverage gets the first vote. In this episode of The Operator, Jimmy McKay and Larry Benz examine how clinicians can gradually learn to reshape their judgment around payer rules without anyone explicitly instructing them to do so. Larry connects the issue to le

Listen to the Episode

Aug. 17, 2026

What Did Healthcare Optimize Away? The Business Case for Humanness

Healthcare has spent decades getting better at measuring, scheduling, automating, and optimizing care. But what if some of that progress has quietly removed the very thing patients value most? In this episode of The Operator, Jimmy McKay and Larry Benz examine the business case for “optimizing humanness”, treating warmth, attention, empathy, trust, and human connection with the same seriousness operators give productivity, technology, and financial performance. Larry argues that these aren't

Listen to the Episode

View all Past Episodes

About the Host

Larry Benz, DPT

Healthcare Operator | CEO | Founder | Podcast Host of The Operator

Larry Benz is a healthcare executive, physical therapist, and founder with over 30 years of experience building and scaling healthcare platforms across physical therapy, musculoskeletal care, and multi-site clinical operations.

He is the co-founder and former CEO of Confluent Health, one of the largest musculoskeletal health companies in the U.S., supporting more than 800 physical therapy clinics nationwide. Earlier in his career, he founded KORT (Kentucky Orthopedic Rehab Team), growing it into a leading outpatient physical therapy company before its acquisition by Select Medical.

Larry is widely recognized for his expertise in:

healthcare operations
private equity in healthcare
clinic growth and scaling
workforce development
leadership in multi-site healthcare businesses

Through his podcast, The Operator, Larry shares real-world insights on what actually works inside healthcare platforms—covering private equity, EBITDA, clinic performance, leadership, and the operational realities behind scaling care businesses.

He has delivered over 250 presentations nationwide and has served in leadership roles with organizations including:

American Physical Therapy Association (APTA)
American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties
Foundation for Physical Therapy Research
Alliance for Physical Therapy Quality & Innovation

Larry currently serves on multiple boards, including healthcare, education, and athletic organizations, and is a trustee at the University of Louisville.

He is the author of Called to Care: A Medical Provider’s Guide to Humanizing Healthcare and a Catherine Worthingham Fellow.

Before entering private practice and entrepreneurship, Larry served as a Captain in the U.S. Army Medical Specialist Corps, where he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal.