How Physican Networks are Changing the Healthcare Landscape

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Dr. Stephen Brunnquell, President of Englewood Health's Physician Network, to discuss the changing healthcare landscape and the importance of bridging relationships between patients and care teams.

5/7/19 #2216

Excerpt:

"We're joined by Dr. Stephen Brunnquell who is president at Englewood Health Physician Network. Good to see you, doctor. Nice to meet you. This is a physician network, right? A hundred million dollar physician network, right? We're over a hundred million dollars in revenue right now, we're just over 400 providers now. What is a... what is a physician network? So, we've taken practices... mostly, they were practices. Prior to joining our network, they were private practices. We've brought them under one umbrella so that we can coordinate care better. We provide a lot of the infrastructure for practices because it's getting harder and harder to run a private practice. Doctors don't want to run an office, they want to treat patients. They want to see patients. They want to treat patients and make them better. Right. So now we can share information. How? We have a single, electronic medical record. We have... all of us are now on the same electronic medical record platform. So, you come to see me, and you say you have some chest pain when you're on the treadmill... Right. And I say "okay, well let's do this, and let's get you to a cardiologist because I'm just nervous about the possibility of heart disease." So I can not only transmit that record to another doctor, I can make the appointment for you, I can send a message to him saying, "Hey, listen I saw Steve Adubato this morning and I'm concerned about heart disease, let me know what you think." What happens too often... we'll come back to that, doctor, but what happens in other situations when there isn't this collaboration and there's more of a siloed, fragmented approach to the way physician... "Well, I don't know who that physician is..." he or she dealt with you... that's what I'm doing... you see... as a patient, like, who's talking a whom, here? That's the way I started. I mean, 25 years ago, when I started my practice all by myself, and I pretended to be Marcus Welby, I thought I took pretty good care of patients, but when you came to me with that same chest pain, I gave you a telephone number and said go call this doctor and he'll take care of you. Now, that doctor sees all of what I wrote. He sees your labs, he sees my notes, he sees your medical history, your allergies your family history, it's all there. What could it do for me as... what could... not me, when I say me, I mean all of you, too. What does it do for the patient? So... In terms of care? So, we don't repeat tests. We coordinate better, we don't make nearly as..."