The Portland, Maine-based practice joined the management services organization in February, and the move was 14 months in the making, Kathryn Hanna, MD, managing partner of the practice told Becker’s.
Previously, the practice was called Spectrum Orthopedics and was a part of Spectrum Health Partners. The decision to join the MSO came amid challenges in the healthcare landscape and with running a small business.
The COVID-19 pandemic was also a turning point, Dr. Hanna said.
“After the changes there was a large loss in revenue ability to see patients,” she said. “We maintained all of our staff during that time frame, and we really started to evaluate what we needed and what we wanted to do. We realized it made sense to focus specifically on orthopedics and do something in the outpatient venue and not a mixed inpatient/outpatient group. Spectrum worked with us, and while they didn’t want to see that split, it made sense for everybody. They helped us work through it over the year, and we were able to do it amicably and make sure that everybody’s been successful with the split.”
When choosing an MSO to work with, Dr. Hanna said finding a group that prioritized the individual needs of practices on the local scale was important.
“Some other groups are looking to be more nationally based with hundreds and hundreds of doctors and streamlined processes across the country,” Dr. Hanna said. “Growth Orthopedics has a group in Kentucky, and what we’re doing in Maine for instance might not be the best practice for Kentucky. We were looking for a group that recognized that there might be local variances and differences and that we can all work the most efficiently in our system without just saying that we’re going to all do everything the same. Some groups do everything the same. Some groups want to outsource, so a lot of it’s going to a central service where you’re requesting those services from a MSO at a big level. Whereas Growth Ortho is like an MSO-lite, and we’re keeping our services local here and hiring locally, which is exciting.”
Dr. Hanna said she hopes OAM will continue to hire more physicians and open more locations to reach more patients. With the support of the MSO, she said she hopes the partnership will help the practice operate more efficiently while remaining independent.
“We want to maintain being a private practice, and it’s hard to compete with a hospital system that brings in a significant amount of revenue and is able to offset their costs in certain ways,” she said. “We needed a partner who could help us sort of navigate these different models that are competing in the same marketplace. I think the only way to stay private was to get some money to invest in us as a private practice. Growth Ortho particularly is really strong on wanting to keep healthcare local, and they’re not trying to change what we do. We’re keeping all of our employees and of our doctors and making decisions on a local level, and that was important to us.”
For orthopedic practices considering their own MSO partnerships, Dr. Hanna said transparency is key.
“The most important thing we did was have open communication between the partners and made sure that everybody was hearing everybody else’s thoughts and making a decision that was unanimous,” she said. “When you’re all rowing in the same direction you can almost go any way to be successful.”
