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Coordinating Care Through Physician Outsourcing
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The outsourcing trend may not stop with the ED and hospitalists. Increasingly, anesthesiology is being added to the mix, although this trend is fairly new. Some think it’s inevitable that specialists will be added to the menu, and that it might eventually be possible for hospitals to essentially outsource all their inpatient physician work, effectively meaning that, other than administrative positions (e.g., CMO), hospitals would directly employ very few physicians, but still be able to hold them accountable to established standards.Critically, the fact that the physicians are not employed by the hospital is invisible to the patient.
Such an evolution would help hospitals avoid some of their most critical and sensitive strategic physician alignment problems, including the often difficult task of holding physicians accountable to established standards and measures, and the difficulty of devising a system of compensation.
“I would encourage everyone certainly to put this out to competitive bid,” Suver says. “We had about four companies interested in the contract.”
Philip Betbeze is senior leadership editor with HealthLeaders Media.
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Comments are moderated. Please be patient.
Michael Eliastam (2/22/2011 at 9:34 AM)
It sounds like reinvention of the Medical Staff organization, but this time they are supposed to cooperate and collaborate. But nothing here sounds like its good for the patient, though i am sure it is good for the hospitals and the doctors. My very recent reports form patients in widely disparate sites, Burlington VT and Austin TX is that the system remains chaotic, and patients still do not know who is their doctor, seldom see their doctor in hospital, and communication between and amongst doctors is still as terrible as ever.