Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
There's a model I've seen gaining traction in flyover areas:
1. Set up practice or clinic in sticks;
2. Gobble up huge patient base due to lack of competition;
3. Flip to larger provider.
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That's the model here too, and it has ramped up considerably since 2010 when the ACA was passed, especially in the last four years.
In my career, though, I've seen this happen three times. When I first started out, in the early to mid 90s, there were a ton of consolidations and practice acquisitions. They were undone when the first model of HMO managed care didn't work out and it turned out that hospitals are terrible practice administrators. There was a more tepid version in the mid-2000s when physicians were trying to build their own hospitals. We'll see if it finally takes, and I suspect that it probably will because of the lessons learned the first two times, and frankly because physicians seem to be a lot more risk adverse than they used to be in setting up private practices. The first 12 or so years of my practice, every single conference had a session on the corporate practice of medicine prohibition (there are only a handful of states that have such a rule), but I haven't even heard it mentioned in the last three or four years, much less have a whole half hour dedicated to it.
Also add telemedicine to the mix. There is litigation ongoing between Teladoc and the Texas Medical Board. (Latest on that:
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/arti...NEWS/161019900) New rules came down last spring, and there may be legislation this session, but with a geographical area so big, sooner or later the physical docs are going to lose ground to the computer docs even if they prevail in the lawsuit.
