A newly created physician practice group at Erlanger hospital will help grow academic programs at the teaching hospital and its affiliated medical campus while boosting the hospital’s recruitment and retention of doctors, officials said Thursday.
The UT-Erlanger Medical Group, which will be an independent arm of the hospital and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, got approval from the hospital’s board of trustees Thursday night at their monthly meeting.
“We believe this joint venture is critical to the well-being of the way we educate health professionals in the state of Tennessee,” said Steve Schwab, chancellor of the UT Health Science Center in Memphis, who was in town for the board meeting.
The multispecialty practice will be an umbrella over the hospital’s employed physicians in specialties ranging from pediatrics to internal medicine to cardiology. Erlanger has tripled its number of employed physicians in the past three years, from 40 to more than 120.
Facing the uncertainties of the medical landscape under federal health care reforms passed earlier this year, physicians and health care organizations are looking for ways to work together, said Erlanger President and CEO Jim Brexler.
“There will need to be vehicles for physicians and institutions to work together in collaboration for clinical integration, being able to create efficiencies, and this is a wonderful vehicle for pulling that together,” he said.
For Dr. Melanie Blake, medical director of Academic Internal Medicine, a practice already established at Erlanger, the change means more opportunities for doctors to make both medical and business decisions in their practices based at Erlanger. And the practice group will have an electronic medical records system that will improve coordination among specialties, she said.
Dr. David Seaberg, dean of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine at Chattanooga, said the group will boost training and research opportunities for medical residents and faculty.
“It’s really aligning the clinical strategic growth of the health system with the academic strategic plan, so as we look to develop new programs, such as in gastroenterology and cardiology, it will be in mind, ‘How does this affect [residents’] training?'” he said after the board meeting.
The change also will help in the development of fellowships in specialties including gastroenterology, critical care, colorectal surgery and cardiology, he said.
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