Health Care Aggregation Insights: Enhancing Physician Practices

Sustaining an independent practice might seem challenging in the modern health care landscape, but by joining forces with others, it’s entirely achievable.  This approach, also known as physician practice aggregation, involves aggregating with other like-minded practices to stay independent while improving financial stability and care quality. 

5 Benefits of Physician Aggregation

Here are five reasons why practice leaders should consider joining forces with other primary care and specialty practices.

1. Accessing More Data Through Shared Technology at Lower Cost 
   In the transition to value-based care, data is king because it can provide context for physicians. In other words, data should help identify not only which patients need specific interventions, but why. It is essential to invest in population health technologies capable of analyzing data from multiple sources across the entire health care ecosystem. By working with other practices and partners such as CareAllies, aggregation enables practices to benefit from a collective infrastructure, that allows them to keep their existing electronic health record (EHR) system while gaining a shared health care technology.

    

2. Enhancing Negotiating Power with Vendors and Health Plans 
   Aggregation offers a compelling advantage in negotiations with vendors and health plans. This collective approach provides enhanced bargaining power, allowing practices to retain their independence while securing favorable terms, much like a larger organization.

    

3. Facilitating Adoption of Innovative Payment Models in Health Care 
   With aggregation, physicians can spread risk over a larger patient base. Indeed, practices that wish to participate in shared savings models or full risk capitation models will likely need to aggregate with other practices in an independent physician association (IPA), accountable care organization (ACO) or clinically integrated network (CIN). That way, they have a large enough patient panel to lend stability to the quality measures being tracked. When managed effectively and collaboratively, such value-based payment models can generate better health outcomes for patients and better business results for practices.

    

4. Elevating Patient Experience through an Expanded Physician Network
   Few things frustrate patients more than when they realize their physicians and/or health plans lack information transparency. Patients want easy access to care in the same way they get easy access to movies from Netflix. Practices that work side-by-side with other physicians—as well as health plans—can go a long way toward keeping patients happy, by fostering integrated delivery care models, ensuring coordinated patient care, and providing access to a broader network. 

    

5. Harnessing Collective Experience for Health Care Advancement
   Whether organized as an IPA, ACO or CIN, every practice brings its own valuable perspectives and experiences to the partnership. Each comes with different needs and resources as well. Practices that are encouraged to meet each other wherever they are and leverage collective expertise have the greatest potential to grow, and improve health care, together.

Conclusion

Practices that work collaboratively are uniquely positioned to ensure that the health care “whole” becomes even greater than the sum of its parts. As care models continue to evolve, organizations can remain independent while moving along the value-based continuum and raising care quality for the patients they serve. Discover how a partner like CareAllies helps transform organizations with physician aggregation to gain a competitive position in their market. Get in touch with us or explore our physician solutions.