THE CHALLENGE: The hospital-managed Family Practice group wished to discontinue their inpatient care practice and focus primarily on outpatient treatment. In-depth evaluation and interviews revealed that their inpatient practices were experiencing low reimbursement and an average length of stay which was much higher than hospitals with an identical demographic.
THE SOLUTION: Under our proposal, 7 of the 24 Internal Medicine/Family Practice physicians’ patients started under the care of two hospitalists. We budgeted the addition of a third and fourth hospitalist at intervals throughout the first year based on growth projections.
THE RESULT: The practice sees over 1,000 patients annually. Even though we see many unassigned patients for the physicians we cover, we have managed to significantly bring costs down. We have reduced length-of-stay by 0.5 days. Cost-per-case savings were $445/admission.
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