EMH Regional Healthcare System has reached an agreement to add a 46-physician cardiology and primary care group to its system.
The 22 cardiologists of North Ohio Heart Center Inc. and 24 primary care physicians from its affiliated Ohio Medical Group will become employees of the Elyria-based health system, according to a statement from EMH. The two physician groups have 14 locations in Northern Ohio, stretching as far as Sandusky and Bellevue to the west and Cleveland to the east.
North Ohio Heart Center was founded 35 years ago in Lorain by Dr. John Schaeffer.
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The agreement is expected to take effect Sept. 1, with the cardiology group taking on the new name of North Ohio Heart (Goodbye, “Center”) and the primary care group remaining under the Ohio Medical Group moniker.
EMH Regional Medical Center in Elyria, the flagship hospital for the system, is already a recognized leader in heart care. Three times it’s been named one of the nation’s top 100 hospitals for heart care, including last year, by Thomson Reuters, according to the statement. Still, that’s probably not enough to get EMH’s heart care out of the shadow of the Cleveland Clinic, generally lauded as the nation’s top heart hospital.
The move by the physicians to become hospital employees is part of a nationwide trend as more doctors are giving up the uncertainty and growing expense of private practice for salaried hospital jobs, especially primary care physicians who typically earn the least of all specialties.
Some blame the trend — or more specifically, the local monopolies and oligopolies that it often produces — as one of the key drivers of America’s escalating health costs. The bigger health systems get and the more control they exert over a local market, the more they’re able to impose their will on insurers when negotiating price or rate contracts.
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However, proponents of the move toward larger health systems say the change results in better, more-coordinated patient care.