Life after death: Doctors thrive after clinic closes

When Burns Clinic in Petoskey, Mich., shut down, the small town and its doctors feared for their future. But having doctors free to go their own way turned out better than anyone thought.

By Julie Jacob, AMNews staff. July 23, 2001.

The 7,000 individuals who live year-round in Petoskey, a scenic resort community nestled along Lake Michigan's eastern shore in northern lower Michigan, know that no matter how cold and snowy it gets in winter, the snow eventually melts, the days warm up and the long, balmy days of summer finally arrive.

After going through their own winter of discontent, the 125 physicians who worked at the community's renowned multispecialty Burns Clinic, which closed down in April 1999, say that sunnier days are here.

It's been more than two years since the clinic shut its doors in the wake of physician discord over compensation and productivity issues, unhappiness with Nashville, Tenn.-based PhyCor's management of the clinic, and the clinic's decision to terminate its contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, the region's dominant insurer. That strategy backfired when other health plans failed to enter the market and the clinic lost many of its patients.

Today, most of the clinic's doctors are still living in the Petoskey area and flourishing in their own private practices. Only about 20 doctors left the area, said John Hall, MD, who was the Burns Clinic's CEO. They were quickly replaced by new physicians recruited to the community.

"In general, most physicians are coming out of the other side of the tunnel," said Dr. Hall, a urologist who set up his own professional corporation and now provides contract services to a four-doctor urology group.

In the days after the clinic's closing, however, no one was sure that the Burns Clinic saga was going to have such a rosy ending. [...]