While in the past, we might have been able to easily segment physician entities into hospital-owned and physician-owned, the landscape is now much more complex. This change has been driven by several factors:

• Private equity and venture capital interest in health care, particularly in care delivery organizations that promise to offer lower-cost, higher-quality care in the ambulatory setting
• Vertical integration by private payers extending to direct patient care
• The re-emergence of physician practice management companies

As a result, there are many more employment options for physicians today. This series of archetypes illustrates different physician entities. It is, however, difficult to draw clear lines between these groups. There are organizations that may fit in more than one of these categories. And as the physician world changes, this segmentation exercise may need to be adjusted.

To compare these entities view our comparison chart.

Read the archetypes below:

Physician-owned medical group: A medical group that is wholly or majority physician owned, physician-governed, and not operated by a hospital, insurance company, or practice management company.

Enablement partner: A private corporation that provides centralized, scalable business resources through a subscription service or investment in a medical group’s managed service organization (MSO). Coming soon.

National medical group franchises: A national, for-profit care delivery organization that is not owned by a hospital or health system.

Virtual care organizations: Care delivery organization that only offer telemedicine services.

Health-system-owned medical groups: A single or multi-specialty group of physicians employed by a hospital or health system.