{"id":6451,"date":"2011-02-14T11:19:41","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T16:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?p=6451"},"modified":"2011-07-19T17:45:19","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T21:45:19","slug":"how-hospitals-view-cardiology-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2011\/02\/14\/how-hospitals-view-cardiology-groups\/","title":{"rendered":"How Hospitals View Cardiology Groups"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>CardioExchange welcomes this guest post, reprinted with permission, from\u00a0Dr. Westby Fisher, an electrophysiologist practicing at\u00a0NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Illinois, and a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at\u00a0University of Chicago\u2019s Pritzker School of Medicine.\u00a0This piece originally appeared on his blog, <a href=\"http:\/\/drwes.blogspot.com\/\">Dr. Wes<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It is no surprise that hospitals are\u00a0acquiring cardiology and primary care groups\u00a0in droves lately, as described in this article from <a href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.beckershospitalreview.com\/hospital-physician-relationships\/18-hospitals-recently-acquiring-or-merging-with-physician-groups.html#\">Becker&#8217;s Hospital Review<\/a>. It seems that, for now, there is a signficant financial incentive for hospitals to do so, but doctors, and especially cardiologists, should read the tea leaves,\u00a0exemplified by this advice\u00a0to hospitals in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.beckershospitalreview.com\/hospital-physician-relationships\/cardiologists-knocking-at-your-door-how-to-determine-if-acquiring-a-heart-group-is-right-for-your-hospital.html#\">another article<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>While hospitals are limited to paying fair market value for practices, they can gain an edge over competing hospitals by offering longer employment contract terms or better electronic medical record systems and management services. If hospitals move forward with a transaction, Ms. Kaplan suggests they limit employment contracts to no more than two years if possible and rebase compensation annually based on productivity. <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em><\/em><em>&#8220;In healthcare you shouldn&#8217;t assume anything is permanent,&#8221; says Ms. Kaplan. She cautions that the revenue increases that are currently available to hospitals through expanding outpatient cardiology services may not last forever, which is why she urges hospitals to limit employment contracts and other agreements to only a few years. Doing so will afford an &#8220;out&#8221; for the hospital if the service line goes from a money-maker to a money pit.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>-Wes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CardioExchange welcomes this guest post, reprinted with permission, from\u00a0Dr. Westby Fisher, an electrophysiologist practicing at\u00a0NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Illinois, and a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at\u00a0University of Chicago\u2019s Pritzker School of Medicine.\u00a0This piece originally appeared on his blog, Dr. Wes. It is no surprise that hospitals are\u00a0acquiring cardiology and primary care groups\u00a0in droves [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1177,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[697],"class_list":["post-6451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-practice-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1177"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}