Last week, Philadelphia-based Rothman Institute announced a strategic affiliation with New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health, which will expand their geographic footprint.
"Our market base is Philadelphia and South Jersey historically, however, with the market changes we felt it was necessary to expand our geographic footprint into Central North Jersey and New York," says Rothman Institute CEO Michael West. Alex Vaccaro, MD, PhD, MBA (President) and Mr. West began conversations with Northwell CEO Michael Dowling at health conferences and the two found their organizational philosophies were very similar.
"Their vision as far as quality service and providing value-based care are consistent with what we are trying to do," says Mr. West. The New York market is admittedly very complex, but Mr. West and Rothman are up to the challenge. "Working with a large system like Northwell where they understand the market very well makes it easier for us to come in and be successful because we are working closely with them."
The partners expect to develop orthopedic center of excellence locations in Manhattan, Westchester and Greenwich Village, where Northwell already has an ASC and medical office building. The group will likely add 20 to 30 surgeons and 10 to 15 non-operative physicians to fill the new practice locations. Rothman Institute already has an established precedent for strategic partnerships with health systems; the practice has an academic and teaching relationship with Jefferson Health System in Philadelphia, PA, and plans to bring a similar model to its new partnership in the New York area.
In addition to developing orthopedic centers of excellence, the practice looks to partner in surgery center syndications as the current inpatient orthopedic volume shifts to the outpatient setting. Over the next three to five years, anywhere from 25 percent to 35 percent of the current inpatient orthopedic surgeries could be shifted to outpatient settings.
Rothman Institute currently has ownership interest in two surgical specialty hospitals in Pennsylvania and surgeons perform both inpatient and outpatient cases. They also have six patient ASCs and are currently developing four more in the Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey markets. As value-based care takes a more prominent role in the medical field, Rothman is trying to stay ahead through Episode-of-Care/Bundled Payment models with both CMS and commercial insurance carriers. Rothman currently has approximately 20 EOCs in place and will continue to expand its EOCs, including outpatient cases. "We utilize patient navigation (Locus Health), quality-of-life and functional outcomes (OBERD), home physical therapy (Force Therapeutics), analytics (Cross Current Business Analytics) and activity-based costing (Avant-garde) technology platforms to manage the EOCs. These are all technologies that we have helped develop and have an ownership interest in."
Rothman Institute will continue to grow within the Philadelphia and South New Jersey areas through the development of additional offices and affiliations with several orthopedic practices in these markets.