The healthcare sector is changing rapidly. Innovative technology and groundbreaking treatments have improved the quality and length of life. At the same time, however, other developments, including a proliferation of reporting requirements, have made it more difficult for clinicians to provide safe, effective, patient-centered care. Indeed, these factors place an enormous burden on physicians who want to build a long-term practice that will serve their community.
Essential Healthcare Group (EHG) provides an answer to these challenges. Launched in the second quarter of 2020, EHG is a physician-owned, multi-specialty professional practice corporation with management support provided by AMSURG.
Essential Healthcare Group was launched in Eugene, Ore. on August 12, 2020. Less than three months prior, a team of AMSURG employees and Eugene gastroenterologists had convened with the purpose of crafting a quick-launch plan for a gastroenterology practice. That practice welcomed its first patient for a gastroenterology procedure in late June and then, following strategic outreach to the local referring provider network, opened the doors of their medical office in August.
“It took AMSURG only 60 days to work with our physician partners on the ground to create a lasting, local professional practice focused on providing safe, quality care and meeting the digestive disease needs of local patients,” explained Angela Durham, AMSURG vice president. “These clinicians were facing a global pandemic and the potential end to their professional practice, but their drive and desire to continue to serve their patients proved greater than those forces. AMSURG is incredibly proud to partner with this impressive team of clinicians.”
Essential Healthcare Group is quickly gaining interest and is currently developing practices in California, Arizona and Connecticut. By taking on the risk and responsibility of practice development and ownership, EHG allows physicians to focus on patient care, safety and satisfaction. By offering a platform to come together across specialties, EHG and its physician partners provide patients with a full service experience that saves them time, money and anxiety and offers a safe and convenient venue for the comprehensive coordination of care.
EHG is able to support physicians in the more than 100 markets where AMSURG already has partners.
“We’re so grateful to have found Essential Healthcare Group. We needed to make a transition to a new GI practice, which proved to be a complex, daunting prospect,” said Dr. Christopher Stanke, an EHG gastroenterologist in Eugene. “AMSURG provided incredible support, along with some peace of mind. Within two days of opening our new doors, we served almost two dozen patients in the community we love and call home.”
EHG builds innovative practices that provide physicians flexibility, certainty and capacity, along with unique and tailored paths toward ownership and income growth.
EHG physicians benefit from a robust corporate team of advisers and operations specialists who provide innovative management, clinical support and strategic services, and expertise in safety and infection control. EHG can help manage succession planning, time off and referral networking, and physicians have access to full- or part-time, temporary or permanent contract providers and nationwide employment matchmaking programs that allow former partners to provide an experienced extra set of hands when a practice has a need or demand. EHG also gives physicians the opportunity to receive guaranteed compensation and a full benefits package as an employed provider while offering the chance to enjoy ownership in an ASC.
“Our aim with Essential Healthcare Group is to take care of business while our physician partners take care of their patients,” said Durham.