CLIENT PROFILE
VICTORIA EMERGENCY ASSOCIATES, LLC
I had the privilege of becoming acquainted with Dr. Jim Brand and Victoria Emergency Associates in early 2014. This clinical emergency medicine group had its roots in staffing an emergency service in Victoria, Texas a few decades ago. From that single partnership the practice grew ultimately to greater than 150,000 annual visits servicing rural emergency departments east and west of San Antonio, Texas, by the time I met Jim. During this time many of the rural sites had requested that hospitalist services be developed, which became another service of Victoria.
It was early in January of 2014 when I met Dr. Brand. At that time he was challenged by a fairly heavy clinical workload as well as singularly trying to manage the business aspects of a rapidly growing group practice. Over the course of a few days we found that we both were health care “retreads” with 3+ decades of experience under our belts, mine administrative, his clinical. Similarly, we quickly found that we both had a clear well-developed preference for independent physician groups, the belief that just because emergency departments exist in rural communities doesn’t mean that services should be qualitatively any less than larger cities, Victoria Emergency Associates should continue to be a preferred group practice site for emergency medicine clinicians and Victoria Emergency Associates should continue to be a preferred partner for hospitals. These fundamentals, while clearly simplistic, forged a commonality in vision and cultural belief about the clinical and business operations of this practice group. That commonality in belief and culture formed a fortified vision for continuing to build and expand the group. Over the next 3 years we were able to double the size of the group, expand the hospitalist base and forge a meaningful new partnership with a major international health care system in San Antonio. We both clung to a strong belief that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” and embarked on a dramatic development effort of the medical director leaders by introducing full financial transparency to all of the clinicians and clients with whom Victoria Emergency partners. The calculation for Victoria Emergency’s margins has remained steadfast and the group’s ultimate vision is to finish fully extending a profit-sharing methodology for all clinicians.
Fervently investing in a large regional independent group in the 2000-teens is bucking industry trends. There have been many offers to acquire Victoria Emergency, however Jim Brand has been steadfast that the benefits offered to clinicians and client hospitals by an independent group are much more meaningful and valuable to the communities we have the privilege of serving. The mission to expand Victoria Emergency will occur through continued investment in the Victoria Emergency culture, a commitment to being a preferred group practice site for clinicians and an emergency medicine and hospitalist medicine partner for client hospitals.