Community moves to integrate doctors

Long before the new health reform law passed, Bryan Mills, CEO of Community Health Network, declared the hospital chain would turn itself into an accountable care organization by integrating with physicians.

Now that such an idea is codified in law, it’s only fueling Mills’ mission.

Community Health now has about 550 physicians, either on its payroll or committed through integration contracts, who have some of their pay hinge on measures of quality and communication.

Community had a head start on other local hospital systems because it kept the primary-care physician practices it acquired in the 1990s, when the managed care concept (a forerunner of accountable care) was all the rage. Today, those practices employ 200 physicians.