Helix Health System is forging a $30 million marriage between hospitals and doctors to boost business and improve services, company officials said yesterday.
The state's second largest health care provider, admitting 52,000 patients annually, has created a network of physicians called HelixCare that will serve the nonprofit system's four hospitals -- Church Home and Hospital, Franklin Square Hospital Center, Good Samaritan Hospital of Maryland and Union Memorial Hospital.
"It's going to be primary-care driven," said HelixCare board Chairman William L. Thomas.
For patients, it could mean less paperwork; for doctors, it could mean more efficiency, officials said. For Lutherville-based Helix, it means joining a growing movement in the managed care business, offering an integrated health care package more attractive to health maintenance organizations and other insurers.
"Managed care is picking up, HMOs have become much more visible and the rate of increase [of health care costs] is questionable as to where it's leading. Now, it's the right time" to establish a network, said Harrison J. Rider III, Helix Health System senior vice president and chief financial officer.
The system will own about 60 percent of HelixCare, a for-profit company under its own board of directors with participating doctors owning stock in the venture. HelixCare is conducting a national search for a chief executive officer.
Helix, with nearly $500 million in assets and $300 million in investments, plans to spend about $25 million acquiring physician practices and developing new sites. An additional $5 million will cover salaries and other administrative start-up costs, officials said.
"Hopefully, it will be efficient so that every time patients go to the hospital, they won't feel like they're a new patient," Mr. Rider said. "I think you will see that the quality of care will be elevated." Since Helix began sending out invitation letters to physicians on Feb. 11, 30 have signed on, he said. The network would like to fill its roster with 150 primary care physicians and 200-300 specialists, some through contracts, others in full-time employment.
The draw is that Helix will give doctors a management team, readily accessible capital, higher salaries in many cases and the time, Mr. Rider said, to "do what they're trained to do, which is to practice medicine."