By Tom Hathaway
Since 1993, Holy Cross Medical Group has been providing compassionate care to the South Florida community. Over the last 31 years, our physician employed group has expanded to 39 locations throughout Broward County. More than 140 physicians and 35 advanced practice providers (APPs) offer primary care services and many specialties including orthopedics, cardiology, neurology, gastroenterology, oncology, endocrinology, rheumatology, obstetrics and gynecology, pulmonology, general surgery, infectious disease and critical care.
The physician employed medical group model is beneficial to physicians, hospitals and patients. Here’s why.
Data within the healthcare industry shows that the number of providers who are in private practice continues to decrease year-over-year. There are several main drivers as to why physicians are opting to join medical groups instead of opening or remaining in a private practice.
- Medical groups help practitioners build a practice and patient panel size quicker. If you’re a specialist in an ever-growing medical group, patients are delivered to your practice with warm transfers through referrals from other doctors within the group. In building a highly efficient, highly accessible, clinically integrated network, care coordination is paramount to success of a medical group. Providing great, high-quality care and access to care ensures a patient’s desire to stay in your network.
- Medical groups also have the power to negotiate better rates with insurance providers and provide more affordable payment options to self-pay patients. This takes the burden off the physician and their office staff, freeing up their time and attention to focus on providing quality care to patients and working to top of their license.
- When employed by a medical group, physicians and their support staff receive a comprehensive benefits package that can include medical insurance and employer sponsored retirement benefits. A group can secure a more competitive rate than a private practice shopping for an insurance plan for a relatively small staff.
- When in private practice, physicians do so much more than provide care to patients. They are also entrepreneurs and responsible for leasing office space, paying utilities, hiring staff, human resources, employee relations, purchasing office supplies, payroll, insurance, taxes and so much more. Those added responsibilities are handled by an administrative staff when working for an employed medical group. It not only allows doctors to focus on being care providers, but it also provides better work-life balance for them, freeing up their time from focusing on running a private business.
- I am seeing more and more private practice physicians who are nearing retirement join an employed group to reduce the weight on their shoulders and have a succession plan in place for their patients to easily transition to a new physician.
- Medical groups also offer laboratory services and imaging, making it very easy for physicians within the group to order tests and receive results quickly. It enables them to speak directly to the lab and radiologists if they have questions about the interpretation of the results.
- Holy Cross Medical Group is part of a larger parent company, Trinity Health System, one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the country. With that comes capital and fundraising power to support innovation, growth and scaling the health system to reach more patients in the community than a private practice physician may not be able to afford.
Holy Cross Medical Group frequently adds new physicians to our roster. Some of these new hires are brought on board once they complete our fellowship and resident GME programs in partnership with University of Miami. This provides us with a constant pipeline of talent who are already familiar with our facilities and core values. We do continue to work with physicians in private practice within the community who are a part of our Holy Cross Physician Partners, which is a clinical integrated health care provider network that unites independent and employed physicians in a program that drives improvements in efficiency and health outcomes.
Tom Hathaway is President of Holy Cross Medical Group.
