The growing trend is toward today's physician to be employed by hospitals rather than to remain in private practice. This relationship is predicated on the loss of income by physicians and the increasing hassles of dealing with managing their offices and staff. This can be a rewarding situation if the employed physician and hospital can align their incentives to add value to the health system. The aligned focus must include managing practice cost, quality, and volume.
The culture of prior physician office dynamics are probably broken by the time the physician agrees to an employment model. The new employer must start by addressing the financial status of the physician office. There can be only one aligned goal for the physician office: to break even at minimum. This is a challenging proposition depending on your employment model.
You must evaluate each employed physician office to determine lease arrangements and amounts to make the best decisions to reach break even status. This may mean that fewer locations will create a greater sharing of staff to spread the overhead across more volume will move the dial in the right direction. You can't fall into the "we make money downstream" concept as an excuse for not breaking even at the physician office level.
The amount of transparency related to health care quality continues to increase. This charge is being led by the Centers for Medicare Services (CMS) as they release data through the Hospital Compare website and other venues. It is important to involve your employed physicians in this process. In fact, it will be smart to include quality as an incentive in their pay formula. The employed physician must be held accountable to quality measures or be cut loose from your network.
The culture of prior physician office dynamics are probably broken by the time the physician agrees to an employment model. The new employer must start by addressing the financial status of the physician office. There can be only one aligned goal for the physician office: to break even at minimum. This is a challenging proposition depending on your employment model.
You must evaluate each employed physician office to determine lease arrangements and amounts to make the best decisions to reach break even status. This may mean that fewer locations will create a greater sharing of staff to spread the overhead across more volume will move the dial in the right direction. You can't fall into the "we make money downstream" concept as an excuse for not breaking even at the physician office level.
The amount of transparency related to health care quality continues to increase. This charge is being led by the Centers for Medicare Services (CMS) as they release data through the Hospital Compare website and other venues. It is important to involve your employed physicians in this process. In fact, it will be smart to include quality as an incentive in their pay formula. The employed physician must be held accountable to quality measures or be cut loose from your network.
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