Arkansas Hospitals Keep Buying Physician Clinics

When hospitals buy physician clinics, the results are mixed: higher costs for patients and their insurers, more revenue but lower profits for hospitals, fewer hassles but less autonomy for doctors. But the trend, which is as evident in Arkansas as it is nationally, shows no signs of going away. This week, Arkansas Business debuts a new list: Hospital-Owned Physician Clinics. It’s a tricky list, ranking the hospitals that own clinics by the total number of physicians they employ directly. Because doctors may practice at more than one clinic, we have asked hospitals to list all of the clinics they operate, but we did not ask for the number of doctors working in each clinic. The doctor-employing champion by miles is the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center, the state’s teaching hospital in Little Rock. It employs 941 physicians and 223 “physician extenders” — nursing practitioners and physician’s assistants — and lists 20 different clinics. No. 2 on the list, CHI St. Vincent in Little Rock, employs 258 doctors and 89 extenders. But it has the longest list of separate clinics, 60 of them, including home health providers. The trend is not new, but it has picked up steam during the Obama administration. Why depends on whom you ask. Insurance researchers at Conning & Co. Inc., in a year-end 2015 report, predicted that “merger and acquisition activity is expected to increase as smaller hospitals struggle financ...
Source: Arkansas Business - Health Care - Category: American Health Source Type: news