Wood River Valley physicians hope an integration of hospital management expertise will help primary health care providers maintain quality care in the face of rising healthcare costs.
Soliciting the services of a medical practice management company, doctors with the Hailey Medical Clinic are no longer owners of the business housed in the county-owned facility on Main Street. However, the doctors' relationship with the community remains relatively unchanged with the new arrangement from a primary care standpoint, said Dr. Richard Paris.
Moreover, with the management responsibility lifted from their shoulders, the doctors hope farming out things like billing and insurance scheduling will help them better do the job they've been trained to do.
"The biggest goal is to keep people out of the hospital," said Paris, one of six doctors associated with the clinic. All the doctors spend some of their time at St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center providing acute care for their patients, like when Paris performs caesarian section operations to deliver babies.
St. Luke's Regional Medical Center in Boise is 50 percent partner behind the new management plan. This brings the current attempt to make health care more affordable in the Wood River Valley full circle, since doctors account for 38 percent of revenue at the Ketchum hospital.
St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center CEO Bruce Jensen said he is pleased with the new arrangement, particularly since the population of the county continues to grow.
Primary health care is not a profitable business, considering the cost of technology, Jensen said. But having strong relationships between doctors and hospitals is essential to good community health care, and streamlining management adds efficiency and hopefully provides better access for patients.
"We looked at models for how to do what we do better and decided to go with the Magic Health Partners model," Paris said.
St. Luke's Regional Medical Center in Boise, and Magic Valley Regional Medical Center in Twin Falls formed Magic Health Partners about four years ago. The organization customizes hospital management systems to serve the needs of physicians' practices, said Debbie Kytle, administrator for Magic Health Partners.
"We have 57 physicians that we work with," Kytle said, explaining the streamlined approach to health care management during a visit to the Hailey clinic, soon to be renamed the Wood River Medical Clinic. Of the 22 independent practices managed by the company, some have solo doctors and others, like a physician center in Twin Falls, have as many as 19 affiliated physicians.
Kytle said doctors on the whole seek to provide care to all patients, including the most needy ones, those who are uninsured and those struggling with the limitations of Medicare and Medicade.
"If we can run efficiently, physicians are better at doing that," Kytle said.
Doctors at the Hailey clinic, who also work at Sun Valley Family Practice in Ketchum, are now linked under the same new partnership called Wood River Family Medicine.
The board of Magic Health Partners will expand under the new relationship to include two Wood River Valley members.
"We're not buying practices," Kytle said. "We're trying to provide stable medical staff for this community."
Paris said rising healthcare costs, including management costs, put more pressure on county and state funded programs, which is part of the impetus to gain efficiency,
The inconvenience for the community of the change in management is that existing patients have to reregister with the clinic to get logged into the new billing system, Paris said. Although the new partnership began billing in December 2004, the old Hailey Medical Clinic is still collecting on old accounts.
"The old billing system was one of the complexities," Kytle said. "It was pretty old. The new (system) is more stable."
Other services Magic Health Partners will provide include financial management of the practice and human resources. For example, if a new nurse or physician is needed, Magic Health Partners will help with the search for new employees, broadening the pool of resources available to the Hailey and Ketchum clinics.
"Doctors are big supporters of the hospital, Jensen said. Helping them succeed, helps the hospital maintain its bottom line.
"Building relationships in this community is really important," Kytle said. "Once we establish them. We can work with any health care issues better."
