Healthcare providers have spoken with Becker's about a number of topics this month, including gastroenterology compensation, physician ownership and private equity investment.
What we heard this month:
How is physician ownership changing in 2021?
Amar Setty, MD. CEO of Patient Premier (Baltimore): Physician ownership is decreasing in 2021. We are seeing greater trends toward employment of physicians. This is because of a number of interrelated factors such as mergers/acquisitions of practice management corporations, a growing push for hospital employment, increased costs of practice ownership and a desire for fixed hours or better lifestyle among younger physicians. The fear of declining reimbursement, combined with the complexity of new payment models, scares a lot of physicians toward employment. Healthcare has become a 'big cap' business, requiring market scale, data analytics and risk management — concepts that small practices cannot handle.
'Profit-hungry bureaucracy' or 'much-needed capital investment'? How PE will shift the ASC industry
Craig Gold. Administrator of Virginia Center for Eye Surgery (Virginia Beach): Private equity investment is a double-edged sword. On one side, it can provide much-needed capital investment and financial stability into an ASC; on the other, it can create a profit-hungry bureaucracy, which can detract from the clinical autonomy which comes from a traditional physician-owner model. The future of current private equity and venture capital investment trends will depend on which side is sharper.
Personalities as important as resumes when hiring, say ASC leaders
Tiffany Jewell, RN. Clinical director of Wellspring Pain Solutions (Columbus, Ind.) and Columbus (Ind.) Pain Institute: When we interview our [prospective] employees, obviously we're really concerned about your skills, but more than that, we're really small — so getting the wrong person in here with the wrong attitude is detrimental. So as we're interviewing, we interview personalities.
Gastroenterologists weigh in on industry trends
Stephen Amann, MD. Gastroenterologist at Digestive Health Specialists (Tupelo, Miss.): Gastroenterology physician compensation clearly decreased in the COVID-19 pandemic. As we work through those losses and work on getting back to full capacity, unfortunately, some insurance companies have made significant cuts in gastroenterology in both physician and ASC reimbursement. This will have a clear effect on the bottom line and continue to put pressure on gastroenterology compensation.
Too soon to tell if robotic surgery is the future, says ortho surgeon
Christopher McClellan, DO. Orthopedic surgeon at University Orthopedics Center (Altoona, Pa.): The things I'm most excited about are honestly not so much in orthopedics. … I think anesthesia is the big key. I think having new anesthesia techniques and new medicines that are emerging that allow quicker recoveries and less of all the things that patients are scared of are the biggest things that we can look forward to.
I think some things that are over-hyped are anything that increases the bottom line. We're trying to find ways to decrease the cost and spending. And I feel like some of these things we see in a lot of robotic surgery; I think it may have its role eventually, but right now it's costly and it hasn't really made a difference in any kind of major outcomes yet.