Delphi Healthcare Partners: Life Savers - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing - Inside Healthcare

Physicians are under enough pressure without the added uncertainty of an emergency call to duty. While some level of on-call service is expected out of all physicians at one time or another, many doctors have reached the breaking point, and hospitals are feeling the effect. Fear not, dear readers, for the cavalry has arrived, and its name is Delphi Healthcare Partners.

David Joyce, President and CEO

“We’ve had physicians say to us, ‘Where have you been? You just added 10 years to my practice life.’ Now they get to do what they were trained to, which is perform surgery,” said David Joyce, Delphi’s president and CEO. “They don’t have to worry about anything else because we take care of malpractice insurance, as well as billing and collecting.”

Delphi helps hospitals with long-term contract physician staffing and practice management services. The company specializes in providing on-call coverage solutions for emergency departments, developing physician groups for clinical services such as intensivist programs and anesthesiology services, and developing practice groups for underserved specialties and primary care. But according to Joyce, the biggest factor in company growth has been the desire of subspecialists to remove their names from the ED on-call list.

General surgeons, OB’s, and orthopedists represent the three categories Joyce said hospitals are most likely to inquire about when contacting Delphi. With OB’s, Joyce said, they are on call 24 hours a day anyway for their own patients. When indigent and unassigned patients with little or no prenatal care seek services, OB’s are brought in on a rotating call list.

“These patients are higher risk by definition, and the OB may not get paid for taking care of the patient,” Joyce said. “So the OB’s are particularly sensitive about dealing with a high volume of these types of calls.”

General surgeons may not be called in as frequently as OB’s, but since many hospitals are short staffed on the number of general surgeons in the first place, this places a significant burden on the doctors.

Orthopedists have the added responsibility often times of continuing to treat unassigned patients in need of surgery, follow-up visits, and rehab services for months or even years. All tolled, the already heavy load physicians deal with while performing their normal duties can become too much to bear for even the most dedicated of providers.

Delphi’s services in contract management and physician recruiting can be of benefit to all hospitals but are particularly useful for understaffed community hospitals. In addition to solving the problem of fewer doctors desiring to serve on an ED on-call list, Delphi’s services can save hospitals money on malpractice insurance and potential lawsuits by making doctors available for emergencies 24/7.

Win-win solutions
The company, which mostly serves hospitals on the East and West Coasts, relies on its team of experienced healthcare executives and recruiters to find highly qualified physicians to help its clients fill in the gaps. Delphi also doesn’t offer “one size fits all” solutions. Instead, the company will work with its hospital clients to create custom staffing programs built to suit the particular needs of the client. Perhaps most importantly, physicians get to concentrate on practicing medicine, while experienced professionals outside of the treatment room handle all the back office business processes.

“We don’t have a private practice, and we’re not trying to curry favor with referring primary physicians or others on the medical staff,” Joyce said. “The source of our patients is the emergency department. Our physicians work blocks of time, and their only responsibility is to provide the best medical care possible.”

Joyce said the company has two groups of physicians who find the Delphi model particularly appealing. One group is around 50 years old, has been in private practice for 15 to 20 years, and is tired of the hassles. The other group is younger physicians who aren’t making the same commitment to medicine made by previous generations. Those physicians are looking for a better style of practice to suit a more flexible lifestyle.

Until recently, Delphi didn’t do much advertising. Some of its marketing was done through occasional mailings to hospitals with more than 150 beds and also through consultants around the country. Delphi physicians and current hospital clients have also been responsible for referrals of friends and colleagues who were likely to find the Delphi model a welcome respite to the typical daily grind. But in 2008, the company began advertising with six ads in the first three months of the year in Modern Healthcare. This is in direct response to growth that has seen Delphi double the size of the company since the end of 2007.

“Our marketing efforts have a cumulative effect. First, someone will see a mass mailing, then see the ads, and then hear about us through word of mouth,” Joyce said. “Since we’ve only been advertising for a few months, it is a little too early to tell how effective it will be long term.”

With more attention being paid to the ED backup on-call problem, Delphi is in good position to establish more relationships with client hospitals and is also likely to find more physicians willing to explore this practice model. The key going forward to ensure company success is to grow within its means. The company guarantees fully staffed practices, with recruiting completed by specific dates and at a fixed maximum cost. Although its partnership with Medstaff National Medical Staffing helps solve staffing issues short-term while Delphi and its clients can negotiate long-term solutions and recruit permanent full-time physicians, growing too fast may hurt Delphi’s ability to keep its promises.

“We have to anticipate and control growth. If we don’t have the capacity, we have to say no. We don’t want to do that frequently, but we need to be able to respond to the hospital’s problem,” said Joyce. “Many hospital’s are desperate for coverage, and rather than close services altogether, we think we can offer an alternative for hospitals and physicians.”

< Previous Story		Next Story >

CURRENT ISSUE

CATEGORIES

HEALTH SOLUTIONS