A radiology group serving two community hospitals within the same system broke apart, ending their contract, leaving a no radiology service. The hospitals recruited five radiologists and organized them under a system affiliated management company with plans to recruit an additional five radiologists to fully staff the hospitals. After one year of unsuccessful recruitment and excessive reliance upon locum radiologist coverage, the five radiologists were frustrated and ready to leave. The hospitals contracted RBS to evaluate the situation and recommend options for solidifying a quality service.
Whenever possible, RBS prefers to reinforce and renew existing relationships. RBS’ evaluation of the radiology service determined the quality of the core radiologists was excellent. Due to the revolving door of inefficient locum tenens, however, the service level and turn around times were substantially below acceptable levels. The medical staff sympathized with the radiologists; however they were unhappy with the service and turn around times to the point where they routinely sent outpatient referrals to outside competitors. As a result, the hospitals experienced an outflow of lucrative imaging studies in addition to the high cost of daily locum coverage. RBS helped quantify the negative financial impact on hospital revenue and determined the radiologists were never empowered to properly manage and run their practice. Working with hospital leadership, RBS determined the core radiologists needed organization, accountability and transparency to be successful in the inpatient and outpatient settings in the long term, and needed to address work flow, governance and personal responsibility in the short term.
RBS recommended the hospitals help form a new group entity to be exclusively contracted to both hospitals to provide structured service levels with specific turn around times, hours of coverage and other unique customer oriented services to re-capture the outpatient business. In return the hospitals would guarantee fair market value competitive income and support for the new group to recruit, remain focused and succeed. Each radiologist joining the new group would become an immediate partner and owner of the corporation in the long term. RBS was able to work quickly with a motivated hospital administrative team to assure there was no lapse in coverage and that short term efforts to stabilize the imaging service during the transition would also improve turn around time and service levels required by the medical staff.
All five of the core radiologists joined the new group and in partnership with RBS quickly recruited five additional specialty trained partners. The new group is recapturing previously lost outpatient business and working hard to promote their new practice with stellar quality and top notch customer service. The radiologists are excited with their new group structure, partners and long term stability.