There’s a clock running right now that most OB/GYNs in private practice haven’t looked at closely, because it’s easy to assume a billing change is a future problem. It isn’t. The window to make a career decision before this particular deadline is shorter than it looks, and it’s already open.
The quiet part of the transition already happened
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended that health plans begin transitioning away from global obstetric payment to per-encounter E/M billing for antepartum visits no later than Sept. 1, 2026. That date has already passed. For a private-practice OB, that means the transition isn’t a single flip of a switch scheduled for some point in the future. It’s a slow tightening that started months before the global codes are formally retired, and it’s already underway.
Late 2026: Everyone else’s fire drill
As the effective date approaches, the finalized CPT Manual details resolve remaining unknowns, and practices across the country scramble at the same time: updating billing software, retraining staff, revising documentation workflows, all under deadline pressure. This is the stretch where every private practice in the country is solving the same problem simultaneously, with limited vendor and consultant bandwidth to go around.
Anyone deciding whether to be inside that fire drill or watching it from outside has a real, practical reason to think about timing now.
Jan. 1, 2027: The hard date
On this date, the global obstetric codes are gone. There’s no retroactive bundling available for anything still in progress. A pregnancy that started under the old system but delivers after the deadline crosses into new billing territory mid-course, with no way to revert.
What the timeline means for a career decision
Here’s the practical math: A move made in the back half of 2026 sidesteps the transition entirely, arriving at a new practice model before the old one changes underfoot. A move made after Jan. 1, 2027, means learning two billing systems back to back, right as the second one is still settling into place industry-wide. Neither path is wrong, but they’re not equivalent, and the calendar makes that difference concrete rather than theoretical.
A practical next step
None of this requires an immediate decision. It’s worth a conversation, framed as information gathering rather than commitment, with someone who can walk through what an employed hospitalist model actually looks like day to day before the transition window closes.
Most people don’t choose a career move by a billing calendar. This happens to be one of the rare cases where the calendar is actually a fair motivation.
Can OBHG meet you wherever you are on your career journey?
Webinar replay: View “The Global OB Code Is Going Away: A Candid Conversation About What It Means for the Way You Practice”