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LifeBridge adds Potomac Physicians to network
Health system gets 32 more primary care doctors in 7 locations
As part of LifeBridge Health’s ongoing effort to expand beyond the walls of its hospitals and into the community, the Baltimore-based health system is partnering with Potomac Physicians P.A., a primary care practice with seven Maryland locations.
The new relationship means the practice’s 160 employees — including 32 physicians and 10 mid-level providers, such as nurse practitioners — are now on LifeBridge’s payroll.
By bringing Potomac on board, LifeBridge enlarges its footprint across the state and increases the potential for a boost in revenue from more referrals to specialists who work in its medical centers, said LifeBridge President and CEO Neil Meltzer.
The deal also puts the system in a better position to meet the broad goals of health care reform, particularly the greater emphasis on community-based care and population health, he said. Reimbursement practices in Maryland are shifting from a system that pays providers for each patient they see to one that rewards providers for keeping entire groups of people healthy.
That means hospitals have to think beyond inpatient care, Meltzer said.
“If you take a look at where health care is going, we need physicians as co-pilots,” he said. “They need to be sitting right at our side if we’re going to improve the health of the community. We’ve got to keep a population well, so our strategy is to expand into the community to make access to care much easier and allow physicians to do what they do best, which is care for patients in that population.”
That strategy is not unique. Health systems nationwide are actively seeking out physicians in independent groups willing to become employees. And there are many practices to choose from — it can be an attractive option for practices struggling with increasing costs and tight margins.
But unlike with some deals between hospitals and physician groups, Potomac Physicians will continue to be responsible for its daily operations, according to the group’s medical director and managing partner, Dr. Carol Reynolds-Freeman. Additionally, the practice doesn’t plan to change its name, she said.
“We’ll still have to worry about those margins, but I’m hoping we can piggyback on some things LifeBridge might be doing, like if they have an [electronic health record] system that is a little bit better than ours,” she said. “We’d still have to pay for our usage of it, but maybe that would be better than buying our own system.”
Potomac already uses electronic health records — which are increasingly replacing paper medical records — but the practice hopes to eventually switch to LifeBridge’s system, which Reynolds-Freeman said would improve care coordination as well as save money.
Under the deal, LifeBridge specialists will regularly visit Potomac offices to see patients in a setting where the patient is already comfortable, which Reynolds-Freeman expects will increase the likelihood that patients will follow through with referrals. It also enables those specialists to generate extra revenue for LifeBridge.
The deal is the latest in a series of recent agreements between LifeBridge and various health care providers.
Within the next several weeks, LifeBridge intends to announce a similar partnership with Woodholme Gastroenterology Associates P.A., which has several locations in the state. And in November 2013, LifeBridge announced a partnership with ExpressCare, the second-largest urgent care company in Maryland, with 11 locations and four more in the pipeline.
LifeBridge now employs about 420 physicians in more than 60 non-hospital locations throughout the state. Meltzer said the health system is primarily interested in adding primary care physician groups rather than specialists. He also said although he’s not actively seeking to acquire one of the state’s remaining independent hospitals, no option is off the table.
“If it makes sense strategically, then sure,” he said.
LifeBridge approached Potomac about two and a half years ago, but neither party was in a rush to make a deal, Reynolds-Freeman said.
“We weren’t in trouble or having some urgent issue, so we took the time to get to know each other as business partners,” she said.
At first, Reynolds-Freeman said, the physicians were concerned about giving up their autonomy — a common anxiety among independent doctors being wooed by large health systems. But Reynolds-Freeman said her concerns dissipated when she realized LifeBridge didn’t want to change the way the practice operates — to the contrary.
Meltzer said LifeBridge was attracted by Potomac’s experience using a model known as the Patient Centered Medical Home, which is based on constant communication among multiple providers to address their patients’ health from all angles. That approach aligns with LifeBridge’s philosophy of providing care, Meltzer said.
Reynolds-Freeman said the health system asked Potomac to step in and “stabilize” an existing LifeBridge primary care office in Owings Mills by implementing the PCMH model and other techniques.
“LifeBridge expects and depends on us to be the practice that we’ve been,” Reynolds-Freeman said. “They’re not asking us to change or to go through them before doing something with our patients.”
Potomac also plans to soon open a new location in the Hunt Valley Towne Centre.
Years ago, Potomac Physicians was affiliated with CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, a relationship that ended in 2004 because “for whatever reason, the health care industry wasn’t aligned enough to make it work then,” Reynolds-Freeman said. But this time around, she said, the incentives are aligned and all the pieces seem to be in place.
“Some practices are fearful that someone will get in between them and their patients [if they join a large health system], which is very, very scary for physicians, so maybe we will be a model for them of how to do it right,” she said. “Maybe we’re naive, maybe we’re romanticizing, but we believe this is an opportunity to do it right.”
