“We wanted to start small with three or four practices, … and we wanted a like culture,” said Dr. Schweitz.
“Our idea was to start small, to get it right, to get it manageable and then grow.”
To get everything in place, the group formed a steering committee that met faithfully once a week for the past six months. The committees handled various topics, such as human relations, revenue, contracts and information technology.
“It’s been extremely effective in getting decisions made and moving forward,” said Dr. Schweitz.
His group gave extra attention to how it handled differing electronic health records and practice management systems. This is a touchy subject, and it can be a big obstacle to bringing different practices together, noted Dr. Schweitz.
The practices had already spent money and training time on new systems and had no interest in tossing them out for yet another new system that linked all the practices together. The group ultimately decided to let each practice maintain their own systems, but hired a consulting firm from Texas to help aggregate and streamline data.
“We decided that was a deal breaker at the beginning and that we would aggregate and get operational with individual EHR systems,” said Dr. Schweitz.
Obstacles & Opportunities
Be ready to jump a few hurdles, such as raising capital to pay for administrative and legal assistance to create a business structure, advised Dr. Schweitz. Hammer out compensation and expense formulas, and determine exactly how the practices will be managed as one entity—doctor to doctor—before getting lawyers involved, he said.
The work completed up front can pave the way for increased revenue streams for everyone to share and greater opportunities for more robust data aggregation, improved contracts and cost savings on supplies, drugs and management, said Dr. Schweitz. The power of the super group is the ability to achieve the scale needed to compete in the new practice landscape.
Be forewarned, “This is not an easy thing to do,” said Dr. Schweitz. Expect delays.
“It’s sort of like the addition on your house. They tell you it will be finished in 90 days or 120 days. Whatever you think, just double it.”
In an unexpected way, Dr. Schweitz’s words at the conference foreshadowed the future of the South Florida alliance. He and his colleagues had hoped the super group would be operational by July 2015, but a few weeks after the conference, the agreement fell through.
