Organizing a new Medical Group Practice - Vincent Audinot

March 2, 2011 - PRLog -- Group Practice Without Walls – Vincent Audinot
A GPWW or group practice without walls is formed by physicians in established practices who come together to form a legal professional corporation. As a single legal entity, the group practice can act on behalf of its physician/employees without fear of violating antitrust, safe harbors and other regulations that limit solo physicians from planning and working together. The key elements to setting up a GPWW are:
• The physicians maintain their separate office locations and operational control over their support staffs, equipment, medical records, and clinical relationships with patients.
• Practice income and expenses are tracked through the group practice's central financial books to each physician’s "profit center" so that the individual's productivity and cost-effective management are rewarded.
• Physicians become employees of the group practice.
• Support staff members become employees of the group practice or of a separate management company that contracts with the professional corporation for management services. This management company may be owned 100 percent by the physicians or by a third-party management firm.
• Standardize fringe benefit plans
• Central payables and payroll system
• Risk sharing on managed care
• Practices operate autonomously.
The benefits of setting up GPWW include:
1. Collective operational and financial leverage in negotiations and program development with hospitals, HMOs, and third parties.
2. Opportunity to share overhead costs and even revenue among physicians.
3. Opportunities to refer to and enjoy profits from group-owned ancillaries and other medically related businesses. Group practice ownership of ancillaries is one of the few remaining "safe harbors."
4. Efficiencies and professionalism of centralized billing, accounts receivable management, accounting, and financial reporting generate higher revenue.
5. Collegiality and support, financial and moral, of others who share common values, objectives, and strength in confronting common problems and external threats.
6. Enhanced ability to recruit new physicians to the area to assume the practice of a retiring physician or to expand services.
7. Economies of scale in buying supplies, services, equipment, and fringe benefits.
8. Centralized human resource functions providing wage and salary management, person el policies, recruiting, orientation, training, and performance appraisals and advancement opportunities for support staff.
9.Ability, through cooperative marketing, to better withstand erosion of patient base to established groups that are expanding aggressively.
10. Delegation of administrative burdens to a central administrator, returning the physician's time to the delivery of medical services.
Physicians who are struggling with the costs, stress and challenges of running their private practice should consider if a GPWW is right for them.
Presented by: Vincent Audinot