“Health care leaders across the country are interested in the physician dynamics in Charlotte because it really has been a unique situation for two very large groups of physicians to leave established health system medical groups,” Bielamowicz said. Then the 42 doctors from Lakeside Family Physicians and Huntersville OB/GYN who left Novant this month.īielamowicz said these moves have caught the attention of the industry. First, there were the 88 doctors from Mecklenburg Medical Group who left Atrium Health in September. What did happen relatively quickly, were these large doctors’ practices exiting Charlotte-area health systems. It’s definitely not going to happen overnight.” Cut the right contracts with payers that reward that type of care management. “Have the resources to be able to manage care. They have to establish themselves as an independent organization,” She said. “But there’s a lot of steps between here and there. Still, Bielamowicz said plans by doctors to make care more affordable by going independent will take time. Because those systems make money from expensive hospital admissions. She explains doctors who are part of a larger health system can often have inherent conflicts of interest. She’s with Gist Healthcare, a Washington D.C. When doctors are independent, they don’t face the same financial pressures said Dr. “We have the ability to take care of a patient in the office,” said Sharawy, “And I’d say 70, 80 percent of the time you handle something that easily is handled within office that just the knee jerk reaction to send them off to higher cost environment.” Instead of by default sending her to the hospital. Cook said she could easily see Sharawy either in the same office or nearby. Sharawy and Cook think joining the multi-state independent practice, Holston Medical Group, will allow them to better coordinate care for patients.įor example, say one of Cook’s pregnant patients is having a problem. The industry is watching to see how the local doctors’ groups fare as they buck the trend. Between 20 the number of hospital-owned practices increased by 129 percent. That’s unusual because across the country hospitals have been gobbling up practices, according to research by the Physicians Advocacy Institute and Avalere Health. This is the second large physician practice in the Charlotte area to leave a local hospital system within a year. We can begin to create a network that’s interconnected.” “We will be unbridled from any responsibility but what’s best for you,” Cook said. He's leading the transition with partner, primary care Dr. That means focusing on what’s best for the patient in both care and value said Sharawy. Primarily our focus is to say, 'look let us create this independence to give us a little more freedom to go to the light.'” All big systems have some rigidness to them sometimes. To OB/GYN Ehab Sharawy returning to independent practice renews, “A level of self-determination that may have been lost a bit,” he said. Both groups were independent before joining with Novant about 15 years ago. A 2012 report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that when hospitals merge in highly consolidated markets, price increases often exceed 20%.For the more than 40 doctors at Lakeside Family Physicians and Huntersville OB/GYN, the move away from Novant Health is a return to how they used to practice medicine. Researchers have repeatedly warned that consolidation in the health care industry is driving up medical costs while showing no clear evidence of improved care. Nearly three-quarters of hospitals in the state belong to a large system, the analysis found.įederal and state antitrust laws are supposed to ensure competitive markets benefit consumers. North Carolina has one of the most consolidated health care systems in the country, according to a 2021 KHN analysis of 2018 data from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. In an executive order issued last year, he said, “Hospital consolidation has left many areas, particularly rural communities, with inadequate or more expensive healthcare options.” President Joe Biden has pushed the Federal Trade Commission to fight consolidation in the health care industry.
0 kommentar(er)
