Maintaining culture is a crucial yet challenging aspect of growing an orthopedic group, according to Mark Conklin, MD, of Golden, Colo.-based -based Panorama Orthopedics.
Dr. Conklin is president of Panorama Orthopedics, which became a founding member of United Musculoskeletal Partners. He spoke with Becker's about his outlook for the practice and the management services organization.
Note: Responses were edited for clarity and length.
Question: What are some advantages and challenges you're anticipating in the next year or so?
Dr. Mark Conklin: Certainly one of the advantages is having this national platform with other quality groups around the country and trying to develop some value-based care, which can be very expensive. It needs the expertise of people who have done it before. We knew that UMP, with Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe, had that wealth of knowledge in corporate development and managed care contracting that we could really harness into.
The challenge with any group that's growing is maintaining the culture. We have had a really good culture at Panorama, and part of that has been because we still feel like we're one group and have grown organically. I guess what I feel in the future is we're most likely going to grow much more rapidly. I think one of the challenges is going to be for us to try to maintain the culture that we've always really loved and enjoyed.
Q: What's one key element to maintaining culture as you grow as an orthopedic group?
MC: It's really trying to maintain communication between all the people that are coming in with activities where the doctors continue to interact with each other. Our culture is one of teamwork, and it’s important to make sure that people don't feel isolated when we grow into different geographical areas and that we maintain communication, whether we're growing regionally or nationally as part of UMP. That's going to be the main thing — to try to continue that group mentality so that we don't feel like we're a bunch of individual groups that have come together, but we're actually one group.