The practices that are joining Alliance, which has about 100 physicians/providers, include:
- PriMed Congress Park Family Practice: Drs. Carroll H. Estep, Matthew L. O'Connell, Talmage N. Porter and B. Scott Teater
- PriMed CenterMed: Drs. Jolinda Caswell, Lisa Kaiser, Raymond Luna and John McCarthy
- PriMed Kettering Family Practice and Podiatry: Drs. Shital Pema, Steve Schaerer and J. Michael Thuney
All are family doctors except Pema, a podiatrist.
O’Connell said he and other physicians decided to join Alliance as a result of philosophical differences involving leadership at PriMed. He said the three groups did not approach Kettering Health Network’s competitor, Premier Health Partners.
“From a patient perspective, there should be no visible change other than they’ll be getting their bill from a new entity,” he said.
The departures cost PriMed a sixth of its physicians, leaving it with just shy of 50. PriMed said the 11 doctors accounted for 25,000 of its 190,000 active patients, though O’Connell said 37,000 PriMed patients who had seen the 11 doctors received letters announcing the change in affiliation. PriMed said some of those patients hadn’t seen a PriMed physician in more than two years.
PriMed said it has hired three physicians recently.
More physicians are becoming employed by hospitals, in part due to the federal health care overhaul, rising overhead costs, falling reimbursement rates and the hassles of running one’s own practice.
Nearly half (49 percent) of physicians hired out of residency or fellowship were placed within hospital-owned practices in 2009, according to the Medical Group Management Association. Of established doctors changing jobs, 65 percent were hired by hospital practices.
Nonprofit hospitals, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University and Wright-Patterson Medical Center now employ nearly 1,000 physicians, including at least 28 percent of the physicians with active medical licenses in Montgomery, Greene, Miami and Warren counties. The number of doctors in Kettering Health Network’s two physician groups nearly doubled in 2½ years, from 79 in January 2008 to 151 in July 2010. Premier Health Partners employed 245 doctors as of July.
“It’s a time of great ferment,” said Bob Matthews, PriMed’s vice president for quality.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7457 or bsutherly@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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