CASE STUDY
How outsourced management helped an employed group practice decrease investment per FTE by 20%.
CLIENT PROFILE
A large regional medical center in the western portion of the United States, this client is the only non-profit hospital in their county and holds a dominant market share in their direct geographic area. The medical center has a 110 plus employed provider group including primary care and specialist physicians, Advanced Practice Nurses, Hospitalists, Laborists and Anesthesiologists.
WHAT WE DID
Working with the CFO of the medical center who had direct responsibility for the employed provider group, MMG began the engagement by performing a high-level operational and needs assessment of the medical group and deploying an initial interim management team to stabilize the group’s day-to-day operations.
THE OPPORTUNITY
As this medical center’s employed provider group grew over a period of a few years, they began experiencing difficulty finding a long-term solution to the group’s management and operational needs. The medical center had tested various individuals in the role of Director of Operations with limited success, all the while watching their investment per FTE in the employed provider group increase significantly to well beyond peer benchmark.
The client needed an outsourced option that would provide expertise in management and operations, as well as support in various other advisory services that would likely not be available internally in their local market.
THE SOLUTION
Working with the CFO of the medical center who had direct responsibility for the employed provider group, MMG began the engagement by performing a high-level operational and needs assessment of the medical group and deploying an initial interim management team to stabilize the group’s day-to-day operations.
During that interim period, the medical center’s CFO requested that MMG oversee the operations of the employed group practice on a permanent basis, so MMG placed a full-time director of operations into the medical center who would report directly to the CFO, as well as MMG.
The new director of operations was given access to a full team “back-office” support system within MMG, which helped significantly improve the employed group practice’s efficiencies and effectiveness. This team provided revenue cycle management expertise from specialists in billing, coding and credentialing, Advisory Services to inform compensation agreements and Fair Market Value needs, robust data through an analytics group and more to ensure the director – and the employed group practice – were successful.
THE OUTCOME
MMG was able to bring immediate and improved administrative and operational oversight to the employed group, leading to a 20% decrease in investment per FTE provider over the first three-year period of the engagement, despite the employed provider group growing by almost 40% over that same period. That equates to approximately a five million dollar financial improvement for the hospital over that time span.
MMG continues to provide ongoing advisory and consulting services to the group.