Healthcare systems appear to be on a late night binge lately, gobbling up Physician practices as fast as they can. It all seems to be part of their “Physician Growth Strategy” – otherwise known as “rather than entice physicians to practice at my system by providing exceptional service and patient care, I’ll just buy them out, make them employees, and structure their contracts so it is to their benefit to send the patients to me.” Well, whatever the reason it’s happening a lot.
Mark Carter recently wrote about his experience with his newly acquired physician on his Healthcare Strategy blog. His physician stated the usual reasons for being bought out – increased back office efficiency, electronic medical records, help with contracting, etc. Not mentioned, but probably a major driving factor was income stability – a salary not dependent upon patient mix (that was now the Healthcare Systems problem). [Click here for the entire article]
While this was all good for the physician, what about for the patient? Continue reading
Performance Improvement 