A lot of doctors in the house

Adapting a rising new business model for medical practices to the traditional doctor-patient relationship, a group of northern Westchester physicians has banded together to offer a broad range of services from local offices linked electronically.
Fifty-six physicians representing some 22 separate practices on July 2 opened Westchester Health Associates P.L.L.C., a multispecialty medical group with a central office in Katonah. The group is renting about 5,000 square feet of space in the former Coldwell Banker building at 60 Goldens Bridge Road at the intersection of routes 22 and 35.
The central Katonah office will offer internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, orthopedics, gastroenterology with an endoscopy suite, radiology and cardiology.
The physician group”™s opening came a day after the official disbanding of the Katonah Medical Group, 20 of whose physicians decided in December to individually join the larger Mount Kisco Medical Group (MKMG) that also serves northern Westchester and Putnam counties.
“That was sort of the catalyst” for the formation of Westchester Health Associates, said Dr. Peter Mercurio, the group”™s president and CEO. Mercurio and his five-physician cardiology group in Katonah were among several consulting specialists informed last winter by Katonah Medical Group principals that “our services were no longer needed,” he said.
“There were more of us left behind than there were joining the MKMG,” he said.
Those independent practitioners and Katonah Medical Group members began planning their new group venture in February, said Mercurio, noting the short lead time for their startup business.
Associates have invested $500,000 to $600,000 in the launch of a NextGen electronic medical record (EMR) system that will streamline communications between physicians and provide a unified patient”™s record for physicians to share.
The formation of Westchester Health Associates is part of a dominant trend in medical practices that has physicians economically combining resources and adopting state-of-the-art EMR technology to improve patient services and access to a full range of medical care. That business model typically includes consolidation of physician services at a central office.
On the Sound Shore, a recent example is the Westchester Medical Group, a multispecialty group of more than 120 physicians that this year consolidated six smaller offices in Westchester communities at a 65,000-square-foot health center in Rye. The group”™s medical director, Dr. Barney Newman, described the consolidation and move away from “small individual cottage-style practices” as “part of a national trend” required by medicine”™s increasing complexity.
The business model for Westchester Health Associates “is a little variation on the theme,” Mercurio said. “Our twist on the model is that we don”™t have a large store, so to speak, we have a number of physicians in their own offices.” With EMR, “Rather than make the patients go to one place, we have the technology to go to the patients.”

“We are a single group, but we”™re a little different in keeping our private offices and keeping our private patients in the office they want to be in. Our link is not one big building, but one big technology.”
“Patients can continue to see the doctors they”™ve always known and loved in their current small office settings, keeping the care personal and compassionate, and yet have instant access to all that a large multispecialty group has to offer.”
“We thought it was an exciting model,” said Mercurio. Most physicians in Westchester Health Associates have had independent practices for many years, he said. “That”™s basically where we started. We wanted to keep our individual practices in place.”
Mercurio said the economic pressures on medical practices also prompted the group”™s formation.
“Independent practitioners have a very hard time with the managed-care companies,” he said. Those companies cannot as easily raise fees for large physicians groups caring for larger numbers of patients.
Independent physicians find it hard to pay for the new and expensive medical technology such as EMR, Mercurio said. “To do it with four or five doctors is almost impossible,” he said.
The large physician group should also provide some economy of scale with large- volume business purchases, he said.
Many of the physicians in Westchester Health Associates will have an office in the central Katonah building while continuing their local practices. The group can be reached at (914) 232-1919.