What happens when a practice can't see enough patients to make a profit...in this case the hospital purchased the practice...put the physicians on a salary and basically runs their business..and they still have a shortage of primary care physicians as a result...sad sign of the times with other practices potentially facing the same or a similar situation..if the compensation is lacking due to lower contracts for the physicians...do they have a choice? BD
This month, stymied by the tough economic realities of primary care, they have come under the wing of a different hospital. Concord Hospital purchased Pleasant Street Family Medicine in early October and now runs the practice.
"The bottom line is it's about money," Betchard said. "The expenses and costs of doing business were going up and the revenue was flat, and there wasn't anything we could do to counter that except seeing more patients, which didn't make sense." Betchard said doctors at the practice had been cutting their salaries to stay solvent and would have needed a loan to replace obsolete billing software.
Green said the hospital hopes to recruit four to eight new physicians this summer to help fill the gaps. Green said doctors and staff at Pleasant Street will run the practice much as they had, although the hospital will help them with billing and other areas where their technology had fallen behind. The practice will become a department of the hospital, and doctors will become salaried employees. Four of the five doctors who founded the practice will continue to work together. One chose to leave when the deal closed. Dr. Mark Bardo left the practice to take a position at Frisbie Memorial Hospital in Rochester.
Concord Hospital buys up practice - A Concord Monitor Article - Your News Source - Concord NH 03301
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