Hospitalist Group Gets Contract for Massachusetts Hospitals

IPC The Hospitalist Company Inc. has expanded its New England market presence by entering into an agreement to provide exclusive hospitalist services to two hospitals in Massachusetts. The North Hollywood-based hospitalist group practice company signed the agreement with Northeast Hospital Corporation to provide the services for Beverly Hospital in Beverly, Mass., and Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester, Mass. The programs have a combined annualized volume of about 50,000 patient encounters. Before the agreement, IPC The Hospitalist Company already had a well-established presence in the New England market. Under the terms of the agreement, IPC physicians will care for unassigned patients, or those without primary care physicians, and for hospitalized patients referred by community physicians on the hospitals’ medical staff. Staffing for the two programs will comprise both of hospitalists previously employed by the hospitals and of new physicians recruited by IPC. “After a thorough assessment of our hospital medicine program, we decided to outsource to IPC because of its extensive expertise in managing hospitalist programs and its commitment to delivering high quality inpatient care,” said Pauline M. Pike, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Beverly Hospital. “With IPC as our partner, we will continue to enhance the hospitalist service we provide to our patients as well as to referring physicians in the communities we serve.” Pike added that there was also special interest in the company’s IPC-Link, a proprietary practice management system that organizes the entire hospitalist practice around post-discharge transition of care, real-time clinical communications for the medical team, and in-depth response reporting to hospital management on key quality and performance metrics. R. Jeffrey Taylor, president and chief operating officer for IPC the Hospitalist Company, said the group is pleased to have been selected by Northeast Hospital Corporation. “We welcome the high quality team of Northeast’s hospitalists to the IPC family and are looking forward to a mutually rewarding partnership with Beverly and Addison Gilbert Hospitals,” Taylor said.