By: Cordell Mack and Scott Ackman
The following article was published by the American Association of Provider Compensation Professionals
Organizations are revisiting medical group strategy and physician alignment in the face of private equity investment, growing medical group losses, and a decline in overall performance. Approaches on how to address medical group performance vary but can broadly be categorized as performance optimization (i.e., enhancing the current alignment vehicle) or pursuing a structure change to an existing model that improves sustainability. In lieu of performance-focused optimization, organizations are increasingly considering whether there are alignment models that are more sustainable and functional than traditional employment given the price transparency and site neutrality trends. The following article explores the evaluation of current medical group performance.
More health systems are taking a multi-faceted approach to maximize medical group performance. The exponential growth in physician and advanced practice provider employment and the growth in reimbursement tied to cost, quality, and access have heightened the importance of medical group strategy. However, many organizations continue to experience underperformance across several domains (cost, growth, access, etc.), and attempts to improve performance have stalled or been met with significant resistance. In most cases, the definition of performance is too narrow to identify the actionable strategies necessary for improvement.
Measurement of medical group performance and provider efficiency has historically been based on investment or operating loss per physician. In VMG Health’s experience, questions pertaining to a medical group optimization are complicated and require consideration of several indicators. Commonly used measures like investment per physician and provider FTE are helpful but can be misconstrued without proper context due to a myriad of factors. Some of these factors include but are not limited to medical group provider composition (e.g., primary care, hospital-based, pediatric subspecialties, etc.), medical group structure, care model, payor contracting strategy, overhead allocation, and payor mix.
