The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act brought about huge changes in the healthcare industry, and many challenges. But with all challenges come opportunity.
Douglas Won, MD, took the opportunity to build a company around providing general healthcare — not only spine or orthopedic care — to his patients to develop a physician-driven, fully integrated health system.
"Physicians are the ones on the front lines taking care of patients," says Dr. Won. "They know what healthcare systems really need. The traditional models where physicians and hospitals dictate to patients how they should be treated is old-fashioned. The best way to develop a system is through collaboration."
To fulfill his vision, Dr. Won launched Lumin Health, an innovative healthcare enterprise company based in Irving, Texas. The Lumin Health-branded practices include Star Medical Center, SpineCARE, OrthoCARE and PainCARE, LuminCARE, LuminER, Lumin FamilyCARE and NTX Anesthesia. The company took ownership of a physician-owned surgical hospital as the foundation of the business.
"Instead of recruiting just surgeons, we recruited a mix of surgeons and primary care physicians and other healthcare providers to develop the hospital together," says Dr. Won. "That opened up true communication and relationships between PCPs, chiropractors and surgeons. We had great success, but we wanted to take that partnership to the next level."
Many of the primary care physicians were solo practitioners who enjoyed being independent providers. As healthcare changed, the cost of doing business rose, while reimbursement declined.
"The large hospital systems would swoop in and buy their practices," says Dr. Won. "Then, as a hospital employee, they would be guaranteed their salaries. But the physicians become a puppet for the hospital and they lost control of their practice."
The goal was to bring together several different solo practitioners in a network, but still allow physicians to run their own practices. The network provides individual physicians with assistance to grow their businesses by:
• Developing ancillary lines
• Generating more revenue
• Becoming more retail-oriented
The network also includes urgent care centers and plans for freestanding emergency rooms in the near future. Patients are able to walk in without an appointment and see their physicians. The urgent care centers have night and weekend hours, and the ER will be open 24 hours.
"The ERs will be equipped to provide any ER service and will be staffed by board-certified emergency physicians," says Dr. Won. "They will be convenient for the patient and a gateway for them to enter our network. Because we are in a small network, when patients need a specialist we can get them in within 24 to 48 hours."
The fast care also lowers the overall healthcare spending. Because the freestanding centers aren't huge, complex institutions, they will run more efficiently and cost-effectively.
"A lot of people wonder why healthcare costs are rising, and there are many reasons, but one is consolidation among large hospital systems, which drives costs way up," says Dr. Won. "Monopolies don't work in any situation and that's what we're seeing in healthcare. Hospitals are buying up surgery centers, ancillary lines and physicians to cut off the competition. Our goal is to change that."
The physicians serve the practice independently and administrators don't dictate care. The company launched recently and Dr. Won is already planning for similar concepts across the country.
"We're working on this model in a few different states," says Dr. Won. "Our goal is to unite physicians. The physicians also have the opportunity to partake in every aspect of the business we are developing and have their voices heard. Every physician is a shareholder of the company and can help direct where our system is going."