Healthcare Dive recently had a chance to talk with Joshua Yedvab, vice president of network development for Oceanside, N.Y.-based South Nassau Communities Hospital. SNCH is a 435-bed facility which maintains relationships with 1,000-odd medical professionals, including 700 independent physicians, 200 allied health professionals and 100 employed doctors. In our talk, we asked Yedvab about his hospital's strategy for acquiring physician practices.
Who has what they need?
First and foremost, Yedvab said, the hospital's strategy is to give patients resources in the community so they don't travel elsewhere to get care. "The motto here at South Nassau is 'the care without the commute,'" Yedvab noted. "Our strategic plan is to bring resources to [our network] so people don't have to outmigrate when they could get their care in South Nassau or its environs."
To support this strategy, Yedvab and his team are on the lookout for medical practices that can add needed resources to its network of services. "Our hospital is designed to be complementary to private practices that we serve," Yedvab said."If, for example, there's a group of multispecialty physicians that could use access to primary care, that's where we look."
Do the cultures mesh?
When South Nassau reaches out to potential acquisition targets, one key objective is to see whether the medical group is a good cultural fit. "We try to look not only for the right services, but also, physicians who want to advance the practice of medicine," Yedvab said."We're constantly looking for high-quality providers who know healthcare reform and deliver quality care. And the practice members need to understand what it means to be employed by a hospital."
When SNCH finds a potential acquisition target, the entire senior management team takes part in the evaluation process, Yedvab said. Not surprisingly, evaluating a practice starts with a look at the kind of care the practice delivers."If they don't pass the standard of quality, that's one thing that could end a deal," Yedvab says.
The background check
Assuming the cultural fit and quality of care are satisfactory, Yedvab and his colleagues go through an extremely thorough due diligence process, which includes a review of the group's operations, their contracts and leases, profiles of the physicians and their malpractice, physician compensation structure, documentation, cash flow and growth trends.
They also evaluate the physicians' practice management system to see if it's satisfactory.SNCH has deals in place with Allscripts and athenahealth for ambulatory practice management and EMR use.
If a practice makes it through the comprehensive screening SNCH requires, and a deal is imminent, the hospital offers doctors two options. Docs can become part of the hospital's full-time faculty, or participate in what Yedvab calls the "friendly PC" model, in which physicians practice independently but the hospital handles management of the business.
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