Report Quantifies Medical Oncology Employment, Consolidation Trends

on July 28, 2010  |  Permalink

Topics: Oncology, Service Lines, Medical Oncology, Hospital-Physician Alignment, Physician Issues

One of the questions we get asked about most frequently is trends in medical oncologist alignment - because of cuts to chemotherapy payment, are we seeing more employment of medical oncologists, practice consolidation etc. Our response the past few years has consistently been "yes," but the only data we've had to support that was survey data from our membership. The Community Oncology Alliance has just released a report, the Community Oncology Cancer Care Practice Impact Report, that quantifies this trend in greater detail.

The report is put together using a combination of public and private data sources and indicates that across the last three years, 242 medical oncology practices have been acquired by hospitals, 102 have merged or been acquired by another entity and an additional 323 are struggling financially. It's hard to know exactly how comprehensive this report it, but it does provide support of trends we've been hearing anecdotally for years.

For those seeking resources for evaluating their physician alignment strategy, check out this webconference, Partnering with Medical Oncologists, and this publication, Toward True Shared Governance (specifically the chapter on physician alignment options).

Quantifying Medical Oncologists' Contribution to Hospital Revenues

on May 18, 2010  |  Permalink

Topics: Medical Oncology, Oncology, Service Lines, Hospital-Physician Alignment, Physician Issues

Merrit Hawkins has released an updated survey of "Hospital Annual Revenue per Doctor by Specialty" and I wanted to share the findings with. On average a doctor is worth about $1.54 million in revenue annual to a hospital, that's up slightly from $1.5 million in 2007. (Note 114 hospitals responded to the survey). Of course, some specialties generate more reveneus than others - Neurosurgeons came out on top average $2.8 M, followed by Invasive Cardiology at $.2. M. Hematology Oncology ranks 7th at $1.6 million. We are frequently asked about the downstream revenues medical oncologists generate for the hospital, and this is the best figure we've seen for evaluating that - of course it's more of a proxy as it will vary on a number of factors - is the med onc employed, or do they own the chemotherapy, do they own their own CT etc. It would be nice to see this data cut by servie type (ancillaries, surgery etc) but Merrit Hawkins doesn't provide that level of detail. You can find the full rankings here.