Frank:
I am with Jon on this one. I started my own practice 19 months ago (yea for me lol), and I talked to two hospital groups. Both of them said the same things that you are telling us here. Here are usually the catches:
1. I don't know how long you have been in practice but is your basic income the same over the last 10 years? Are you growing? The reason is that what ify ou keep getting busier, then you still get paid on last years information?
2. do you know what an RVU is? I don't. I am on the economics committee at the my national association (AMSSM) and we can't figure out what RVU's are. The reason being, that everyone calculates it differently. So the 1.15 of RVU may not be a pay raise but a pay decrease or the same. Just take note of that and make sure you get a number from them on salary and make sure you are happy with it.
3. I bet they make you go to their EMR system. They will give you terminals andcomputers which they will givey ou refurbed or used.
4. They may tell you that you get control of your employees, but you better talk to a bunch of people who are in the system now or who have left the system. The ones who have left will really tell you the issue.
I talked to a bunch of guys in the systems here and the ones that left and the way it worked here is they give you a salary and then they give you a production percentage so you "eat what you kill". But when the guys would call billing to say hey why didn't we get paid more for this or that, they were told "you do the medicine, we do the billing, so stop inquiring"
Also they lost the employees they had and the hospital system decided who they got and how many employees and what the salary was. And if the doc told the employee they were doing things wrong, then the employee called the hospital system and usually teh doc was told hey you can't tell the employee to do that.
Just some thoughts to think about. See what they offer you on paper. Before you even hire a consultant, i would just see what they offer.
I have seen a good amount of friends get burned on these deals.
Also , since they take over the lease and the office supplies lets say in five years, you want out, you will lose the office space you may have had for many many years and your employees becuase they are now employees of the hospital system.
P.S. I CALL THIS THE PHYSICIAN CONTROL MODEL
