While many physicians are abandoning their independence in favor of alliances with hospitals or large healthcare providers, one Midwest health system is launching a new organization designed to preserve doctors’ autonomy while helping them adapt to the new healthcare landscape.
The Sisters of Charity Health System, a faith-based network of hospitals in Ohio and South Carolina, has established Independent Physician Solutions, a subsidiary designed to offer independent physicians in northeast Ohio a wide range of services, ranging from practice management and electronic medical record solutions to guidance on becoming an independent practice association and an accountable care organization.
“What is different about IPS is that we are a physician-led organization, which will offer an equity model that physicians can invest in if they so choose and a governance structure that will have more than 50 percent of the board comprised of physicians,” said Orlando L. Alvarez, Jr., senior vice president for physician alignment with the Sisters of Charity Health System and CEO of the new organization, in a recent press release.
“It is really about strategy,” he said. “We believe that independent doctors who wish to remain independent need to partner with organizations whose goal is not to control their patient records or gobble them up in an employment model. Our goal is to create a 'safe haven' for the independent physician and garner the collaboration of physicians who share our faith-based mission.”
To help guide the IPS, Sisters of Charity selected Mark Wiedt as its president and chief operating officer. A veteran of more than 30 years in healthcare, Wiedt had been CEO of Premier Physician Partners, a 70-plus multi-specialty group practice in Westlake, Ohio, one of the largest independent physician groups in the state, before joining the health system last February as CEO of the Cuyahoga Physician Network.
According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers 2010 report “From Courtship to Marriage: Why Health Reform is Driving Physicians and Hospitals Together,” nearly three-quarters of physicians surveyed are already in financial relationships with hospitals, while more than one-third say such arrangements decrease administrative burdens such as healthcare IT requirements. Yet the same survey indicated 20 percent don’t trust hospitals and another 57 percent said they only “sometimes” trust them. Reasons for that mistrust include competing goals, a lack of transparency, lack of physician representation on governing bodies, lack of communication and misaligned incentives.
Statistics indicate there are more than 4,000 independent physicians in northeast Ohio, a region bucking the national trend of physician alignment. In offering membership to IPS, Sisters of Charity is offering those physicians, among other things, access to GE’s Centricity Practice Management and EMR solutions, billing and collections services and group contract opportunities with healthcare insurance companies and other payers.
Gregory Hall, MD, a Cleveland-based independent physician specializing in internal medicine, said doctors like him are feeling pressured to give up their independence and join health systems to prepare for health reform requirements.
“Many of us own practices that are small businesses, and we have been very successful for years in treating our patients and managing our books,” he said. “But with new EMR requirements, some physicians are overwhelmed with the adoption process and feel they have no choice but to completely affiliate with a large health system that can help them with new technology requirements.”
My partnership with IPS provides my practice (with) the support I need without giving up my autonomy,” he added. “It allows me to continue doing what’s best for my patients without being controlled.”
Established in 1992 as the parent corporation for the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine in Ohio and South Carolina, the health system solely owns four Catholic hospitals – St. Vincent Charity Medical Center in Cleveland, Mercy Medical Center in Canton, Ohio, and Providence Hospital and Providence Northeast in Columbia, S.C. – and sponsors St. John Westlake Medical Center in Westlake, Ohio, in a joint venture with University Hospitals of Cleveland. The health system also oversees three grant-making foundations and several human services and education-related organizations, including elderly and child care centers.
“We have a legacy of collaboration and partnership with our independent physicians,” said Sister Judith Ann Karam, CSA, the health system’s president and CEO. “We made it part of our faith-based mission to invest in this very important initiative to help ensure the high quality and efficiency of healthcare in Northeast Ohio.”