EDPMA New Member Spotlight
(The original article may be accessed HERE)
Partners in Improvement, LLC helps emergency medicine leaders with high level reviews of strategy and competition, new ideas for practice management, personnel issues, and tactical advice on IT, billing and coding. They offer expertise across a diverse range of skills including operations, executive coaching, and project management. Not only does Partners in Improvement perform assessments, they assist in implementing all recommendations and have a practice of sharing risk (i.e. consulting fees) to achieve agreed upon metric improvement. Please visithttp://partnersinimprovement.co/ to learn more about Partners In Improvement’s services.
Excerpts from a conversation with Dan Kirkpatrick, Founder and Owner, Partners in Improvement:
My career in healthcare consulting started in a circuitous way through a big accounting firm where I worked in their healthcare division. Since then I have kept my toes in the field through personal consulting because I enjoyed it. Years later, the physician group I worked for went through a merger. It was then that I decided it was time to go independent. The name for my business actually came from a client!
I had attended EDPMA’s Solutions Summit five or six years ago in Las Vegas and connected with a number of members. We kept in touch over the years so I was able to keep up with EDPMA activities. After formally launching Partners in Improvement, I reviewed multiple associations to determine which to join. EDPMA made the cut because it is more aligned with my consultancy and practice management. The association keeps a pulse on events affecting the industry such as reimbursement, licensures and freestanding emergency centers. They then share that information through EDPMA newsletters and news alerts.
At this year’s conference, I sat in on two committee sessions. It was good to see the cordial relationship among peers. I’ve noticed that this willingness to support and help others in the industry is more visible than at other organizations. There is a receptiveness to being available and inclination to share information.
One of the challenges for independent groups is having to more urgently meet the financial equation of its members. They are struggling to staff their contracts. The hospitals also want their ED partners to be more involved with issues such as readmissions, patient flow and home health. And changes in reimbursement mean the way groups made money in the past is going to change as different risk sharing models surface. The history and experience of EDPMA members are a valuable resource. They are experimenting with various models of organization and payment to help sort out what works and what does not.