I am in solo practice and prefer to be that way but...
1)Docs in group practice usually see more patients per hour (if you do not get to know them, you do not spend time asking about relatives and mental health and the like)
2)Groups use economies of scale with employees, so that benefits and time can be cross covered more easily.
3)Docs are usually working more hours seeing patients. If you do not have to to any administrative duties, you can "produce more product." This combined with #1 makes a big difference.
4)Especially now, groups are covered by hospitalists. No more giving time for rounding,couple hours to see 2-4 patients, now it's 4-6 patient per hour not couple of flex hours.
5)Groups often have more expanded hours, which IS good for patients. It's easier to cover late nights and early mornings when you have a group. Truly a benefit on the group side here. Expanded hours mean more utilization of the facility and lower cost.
6)Costs are often underwriten by writing them off for the entire corpooration. So IT costs get floated to other areas. How else can they have 100K programs before or even after the gov'mt involvement.
7)Your senario about buying and selling practices and hospitals not quite knowing what they are doing is common. They see us as revenue streams, to bring patients in the hospital. This will increase as they see the focus shift to the outpatient world and outpatient medicine becomes more important. The money is in the hospital, not the office. That may shift (I sincerely hope so) Then we will become more "valuable." Look for another round of buying. We have our ear to the ground so we know the community. Even community hospitals do not understand patient behavior as well as we. But then again, they sometimes treat them like cattle. Not all, but enough that I can make the statement.
