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Physician/Hospital Integration

Why is physician-hospital alignment so important to building a well-conceived integration strategy?

In the past, integration has been pursued with an array of organizationally-driven goals:

  • Protecting/expanding market share
  • Securing a more stable provider platform
  • Preventing duplication of services
  • Consolidating the delivery system

And while those goals remain relevant today, in this new era of Health Care Reform, other goals have emerged as essential to success:

  • Providing an exceptional patient experience each and every time
  • Measuring the quality and value of care delivered
  • Delivering the highest quality of care with the least amount of variation and greatest efficiency
  • Population health management

Wipfli health care professionals believe that physician-hospital integration must start with an appreciation for the differences between traditional hospital and physician business models and operations. With that shared understanding the journey to develop a more effective and efficient community delivery system can begin with three key concepts:

  • Physician influence over and participation in the success
  • Development of a robust clinical integration program (CIP)
    • Focus on quality management programs and protocols and the requisite infrastructure (i.e., IT, facility/ equipment, etc.) and physician compensation models to manage them
  • Effective leadership and governance

In addition, Wipfli is able to assist in a variety of other areas that typically need to be addressed as clients move towards full integration:

  • Strategic Business and Financial Planning
  • Facility Development and Planning
  • Revenue Management
  • Hospital/ Medical Practice Operations

Featured Expertise
 

Davis Fansler

Davis Fansler has a unique blend of health care experience: commercial banking, medical group administration, HMO development, and venture capital. Davis primarily works with hospitals and health systems in all areas of their physician alignment strategy, including strategic planning, financial performance benchmarking, physician compensation and developing and implementing alternative alignment/ integration structures such as service line co-management and professional services agreements.

 

Perry Hanson, MHA

Perry Hanson has more than 30 years of experience in ambulatory health care management and organizational consulting. Perry assists both hospitals and group practices with projects including: community-based integrated service delivery, ambulatory governance analysis and design, strategic planning, and physician compensation design.

 

 
 
 
Featured Success Story


Creighton Medical Associates


Creighton Medical Associates and the Creighton School of Medicine determined that restructuring the physician compensation plan was needed to better account for and reward its clinical and teaching missions by its physician faculty. After setting the strategy and context, Wipfli made benchmark comparisons of physicians’ productivity and compensation to national academic medical center data, as well as interviewed key stakeholders. Then, clearer expectations and goals were established for each activity, and the financial impact of greater clinical productivity was measured. As a result, clinical productivity has increased, and clinical variation has also been reduced. Incentives are now being considered both for various quality metrics (e.g., PQRI and clinical productivity rewards) and for development of a greater sense of “group” and divisional unity within CMA. Equally importantly, each physician now has greater clarity about how to allot and measure his or her time to ensure accountability is increasingly embraced throughout CMA.


Creighton Medical Associates
Todd Carlon, Chief Executive Officer
“Wipfli gave confidence to our faculty leaders during the interview stage and with inclusion of compensation science and benchmarking analyses, provided us a compensation methodology and strategy, a communications plan, and tools to self-monitor forward, all in five months.”