• Government
• Profession
• Business
• Opinion
• Health

• Health reform
• H1N1
• P4P
• EMRs
• Medicare
• Liability
• AMA House
• » More

• Book Excerpt
• Business Pitch
• Meetings
• » More

• Contract Language
• Ethics Forum
• In the Courts
• Practice Management
• Technically Speaking
• » More

• Bby date
• Regions
• Health plans
• Sections
• News briefs
• Columns
• Editorials
• Letters
• Writers
• Other years

• Search tips
• E-mail alert
• Radio
• RSS
• Mobile
• Subscribe
• Institutions
• Staff directory
• Advertising
• Permissions
• Reprints
• News media
• Site guide
• Useful links
• About
• Premium
• Contact

Physician input helps hospital-owned group make money

While many hospitals have dumped their money-losing medical groups, one system in North Carolina gave more authority to its doctors and saw a profit.

By Mike Norbut, amednews staff. April 7, 2003.

• PRINT|
• E-MAIL|
• RESPOND|
• REPRINTS|
• SHARE

While hospitals across the country were getting rid of physician practices they deemed to be losing propositions, one North Carolina system bucked the trend by holding onto its medical groups. That strategy has finally paid off for Novant Health, which saw its Winston-Salem physician practices make a profit for the first time in 2002 after it turned to its physicians for more leadership.

Novant, which owns six hospitals in Winston-Salem and Charlotte, made $2.5 million last year on Forsyth Medical Group, its collection of nearly 170 physicians divided among about 30 offices in the Winston-Salem area. The medical group had cost the system $25 million as recently as 1999.

"There's been a lot of little things going in the right direction," said Jack Thomas, MD, a family physician in Winston-Salem who sold his practice to Novant in the mid-1990s and started working as an employed physician. "They've tightened some things up a bit, but clinically the hospital has never been one to push us. Yes, everybody is in the position of trying to meet and see patients, but I don't think anybody feels pressure."

What they feel, instead, is a sense of ownership, despite being hospital system employees. One of the changes implemented to turn the practices around was to let the doctors' board have more say in running the medical group, said Stephen Spare, MD, executive vice president of Novant Health/Forsyth Medical Group. By leaving more of the business decisions up to the doctors and allowing them to govern themselves, the system changed the medical group into more of a private practice -- and changed its own fortune in the process.