How we moved our doctors back to market fitness.

Abstract

How does an integrated health system facing market turndown and tremendous losses on its acquired physician practices get back to market sanity? That question is one that many hundreds of hospitals and health systems are trying to answer, as they attempt to disentangle themselves from physician practice purchases of the past decade that have not worked out as planned. The example of one Midwestern health system provides a classic case study in how to turn around the very common "we-bought-all-these-docs'-practices-too-high-now-what-do-we-do" scenario plaguing health systems across the country. A senior executive in charge of the physician-practices turnaround at one system spoke at length recently with Physician Performance & Payment Report about his organization's experiences and ongoing turnaround. He has asked that the name and location of the organization and his own name be obscured. Here is his organization's story.