The urge to merge among surgeon owned practices continues unabated across the United States.
Three Bay Area Ortho Groups Are Joining Forces
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Secondary#clinicmergers#kccampion#muirorthopaedic#orthonorcal#websterorthopedics
Three California-based physician owned orthopedic practices have announced that on January 1, 2022, they will become a single practice known as Golden State Orthopedics & Spine.
The three San Francisco Bay Area practices include Muir Orthopaedic Specialists, OrthoNorCal, and Webster Orthopedics. Once consolidated, the practice will service patients from its 18 locations in 11 cities around the Bay Area.
Golden State Orthopedics & Spine will “consist of more than 60 musculoskeletal specialists including primary care physicians, orthopedic surgeons, pain management experts and more.” It will also have more than 550 employees. This will make it the third “largest specialty orthopedic group in the western United States.”
In the press release, OrthoNorCal CEO Andy Miller said, “There are many benefits of being a bigger group. Our geographic footprint now allows us to expand patients’ access to our high-quality care and being larger gives us more leverage of clinical and business synergies that will help us drive value through to our patients.”
The groups decided that the new practice will continue to be a completely physician owned practice. Its board of directors will consist of board-certified orthopedic surgeons.
Muir Orthopedic Specialists CEO KC Campion discussed the merger with OTW, saying, “The three groups have been working on joining together since February 2018 and are now at the point where they will begin electing their new officers and governing board for 2022 and beyond.”
Campion continued, “We have made excellent early progress in uniting our groups and we continue to work on our systems and processes to build a strong foundation for the future.”
“Our goals for 2022 include leveraging technology to improve the patient experience. This includes updating our patient portal, introducing automated online appointment scheduling, and offering more options for patients to choose how we communicate with them.”
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This is a fascinating development. In my practice we've seen similar outcomes with the revised protocol. The key differentiator seems to be patient selection criteria. Has anyone else noticed the correlation with BMI thresholds?
Great point. I'd push back slightly on the conclusion, the sample size in the cited study is too small to draw population-level inferences. That said, the directional signal is compelling and worth a larger RCT.
We implemented a similar approach last year. Early results are promising but we're still gathering 12-month follow-up data. Happy to share our protocol if anyone is interested.
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