AAO-HNSF 2027: September 18-21, New Orleans
The AAO-HNSF Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO runs September 18-21, 2027 in New Orleans. The Academy lists future dates as subject to change, so confirm before booking anything non-refundable. Sorso is not an exhibitor, sponsor, or speaker at this event. This is an independent prep guide for ENT practice owners.
The CFO read
ENT is four businesses wearing one P&L, and the blended view hides the answer almost every time. The practices we see with the clearest picture are the ones that margin audiology separately, because the moment you count cost of goods and return rate it stops looking like the reliable earner people assume it is. Split the four lines before New Orleans. The sessions will land differently when you already know which of your own lines is carrying the others.
— Stanislav Sukhinin, CFA · Founder, Sorso
Why this matters for your bottom line
ENT spans office procedures, surgery, audiology, and allergy, and the four behave nothing alike financially. Groups that report one blended margin are averaging away the information they need.
In-office procedures such as balloon sinuplasty and laryngoscopy shifted meaningful revenue out of the operating room. Whether that shift helped depends on your site-of-service reimbursement and your equipment cost recovery, which is practice-specific.
Audiology and hearing aid dispensing is a retail business inside a medical one, with inventory, cost of goods, and its own competitive pressure. It is frequently the least analysed line in the practice.
Allergy testing and immunotherapy carry recurring revenue and a distinct documentation burden. Practices running it well treat it as a program; practices running it casually usually lose money on it.
What to look for
Practice management sessions on in-office procedure economics and equipment cost recovery
Audiology and hearing aid dispensing margin, including direct-to-consumer competitive pressure
Allergy and immunotherapy program economics and documentation
Site-of-service and ASC sessions on which cases belong where
Coding updates for sinus, laryngology, and otology procedures
Workforce sessions covering audiologist and APP integration
Financial prep checklist
Review these before you go.
Split your P&L into surgery, in-office procedures, audiology, and allergy, and margin each separately
Run cost recovery on in-office procedure equipment against the case volume actually delivered
Calculate hearing aid gross margin with cost of goods, fitting time, and return rate included
Measure allergy immunotherapy revenue per patient against the staff time the program consumes
Compare facility versus office reimbursement for the procedures you can do in either setting
Check denial patterns on sinus and otology codes, where documentation requirements are heaviest
What it costs to send someone
Registration is the line everyone budgets first. It is rarely the one that decides whether the trip was worth it.
Registration
The Academy has published dates and city for 2027 and flags them as subject to change. Rates are not out. Treat the dates as firm enough to plan around and soft enough not to buy non-refundable flights against yet.
Coverage and lost production
Four days covering a Saturday through Tuesday takes two clinic days and, for operating ENTs, a block day. Surgical cases displaced by the trip push into the following weeks rather than disappearing, so the cost lands after you get back.
Who else travels
ENT groups often send surgeons and an audiology lead together. That multiplies travel and pulls two different revenue lines offline in the same week.
What comes back as a deduction
IRS Publication 463 allows the travel deduction for a convention where “your attendance benefits your trade or business,” on the ordinary rules for travel away from home. Meals are generally limited to 50% of the unreimbursed cost. Keep the agenda with the receipts, and confirm the treatment with whoever signs your return.
No rates are quoted here. The organizer had published none when we last checked this page against their site on 10 August 2026, and travel is yours to price for your own dates anyway. The point of the list is that the two lines owners leave out, coverage and headcount, are the ones that decide the real number.
Before AAO-HNSF 2027 Annual Meeting, get your own numbers straight
Walk in able to check every benchmark on the slides against your own numbers. Three ways owners start with us:
Fractional CFO
Strategic CFO for $3M–$50M clinics
Forecasts, location-level P&L, and exit prep. Starts at $4,000/mo.
Explore Fractional CFO →Accounting
Healthcare-specialist accounting
Books done right by people who understand clinic finance. Starts at $2,000/mo.
Explore Accounting →Free Assessment
A financial checkup before you go
Four minutes. See where your practice stands so every session is measured against your own numbers.
Take the assessment →Going to AAO-HNSF 2027 Annual Meeting?
Tell us, and we will look at coming to meet you.
Stan does not have a ticket booked for this one yet. If enough clinic owners want to sit down there, that is what decides it. Register interest and we will confirm either way well before the dates — no obligation, and we will not add you to a mailing list.
Register interest in meeting →
Founder of Sorso and a CFA charterholder. Before Sorso, Stan spent 19 years in corporate finance at institutions including UniCredit and Société Générale — managing a $450M loan portfolio and making senior partner at a major mezzanine lender by 29 — then built a fractional CFO firm exclusively for outpatient healthcare clinics.