Your Challenge
Hospitals and health systems nationwide are being hit with unsustainable physician subsidies, significant patient access issues, and disparate and often misaligned physician services.
Many organizations lose as much as $200,000 per year per employed physician—equal to $20 million in subsidies annually for every 100 employed physicians. At the same time, the average patient has to wait more than 20 days for a physician appointment. Consumers increasingly are turning to alternative care options as a result, such as urgent care centers, retail clinics, or telemedicine providers.
How We Can Help
Kaufman Hall offers an array of services to help health systems, physician groups, and other healthcare organizations improve physician practice performance and achieve their strategic priorities.
Reduce physician investments/subsidies
- Improve short- and long-term physician enterprise margins
- Uncover and implement solutions to improve provider revenue (and productivity)
- Benchmark your cost drivers and bend the cost curve
Enhance patient access and increase physician revenue
- Retain existing patients and attract new ones by improving the Ambulatory Patient Access Journey
- Develop and implement a “front door” strategy for your health care consumers that integrates your health system’s physician clinics with alternative front-doors including retail, urgent care and digital.
Transform your physician enterprise strategy and operations
- Develop and refine your physician enterprise strategy
- Enhance productivity and streamline operating models
- Effectively leverage Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) to meet consumer expectations
Align clinical and financial interests for long-term success
- Strengthen Physician-System Alignment and Governance
- Develop and Operationalize Clinical Integrated Networks (CINs) that produce results
- Align physician productivity and compensation models
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What We Do
More than three-quarters of practicing physicians are employed. Yet high costs, poor alignment, and disjointed strategies threaten to upend a health system that increasingly relies on physicians to serve as the front door for patients seeking a full spectrum of healthcare services.
Case in point: 85% of the population sees a physician every year, while only 8% spends time in a hospital bed.
To address these challenges and ensure the best care for the communities they serve, hospitals and health systems must balance three dimensions of the physician enterprise:
- Physician productivity. Do we have appropriate productivity targets? How can we maximize physicians’ time with patients and best leverage advanced practice providers to boost practice productivity? How can we increase practice revenues and reduce physician subsidies?
- Patient volume. Are we offering the right mix of physician services for our market(s)? Are we gaining or losing market share? Where can we best grow services, and where may there be opportunities to reduce redundancies/streamline services?
- Patient access. Are we able to accommodate patients in a timely manner? Do we have adequate staff to meet demands? How can we enhance access and decrease physician appointment wait times?
Physician Enterprise Core Team
Matthew Bates, Physician Enterprise Service Line Lead
Matthew leads Kaufman Hall’s Physician Enterprise Service practice. He works with physician and administrative leaders to create financially sustainable great places for physicians to practice and patients to receive care.
Learn More About Matthew
Cynthia Arnold, Senior Vice President
Cynthia Peters Arnold is a Senior Vice President for Kaufman Hall and a member of the firm’s Physician Advisory Practice, working across the Performance Improvement and the Strategic and Financial Planning Practices. She has more than 30 years of senior management and consulting experience transforming health systems, physician practices, & payers.
Learn More About Cynthia
David Masters, Vice President
David Masters is a Vice President with Kaufman Hall and a member of the firm’s Physician Advisory Practice, an integral part of the Strategic and Financial Planning practice.
Learn More About David
Michael Coppola, MBA, FACHE, Senior Vice President
Michael Coppola is a Senior Vice President in Kaufman Hall’s Strategy practice. With more than 30 years of healthcare experience, he serves as a trusted advisor to physician leaders on enterprise management issues such as physician leadership and alignment, and operational performance outcomes and governance.
Learn More About How Our Experts Can Help
Featured Physician Enterprise Insights
The ED Is No Longer Your Front Door: The Physician’s Office Is
The long-held notion that the ED is the front door to the hospital remains pervasive. And no wonder. As of just a few years ago, ED visits were responsible for a massive 70% of inpatient admissions. However, the underpinnings of this conventional wisdom have shifted in some very significant ways.
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Balancing The Physician Enterprise Triangle: Achieving Equilibrium Amid Rapid Change
The physician enterprise of a hospital or health system must similarly balance three dimensions: the productivity of its clinicians, the organization’s capacity to provide access to care to patients when they need it, and the volume of existing and potential patients in the markets it serves.
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Physician Flash Report: June 2021
Physician groups across the country continued to see key performance metrics return to near pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2021, suggesting an end to the volatility driven by COVID-19 that rocked practices throughout 2020.
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