Facey Medical Group may be eliminating its presence in Castaic after more than decade of operating a two-doctor office there, but the healthcare provider is not retrenching, in fact, quite the opposite. Facey Medical Group is adding about 25,000 square feet of new clinical space this year, opening a brand new facility in Porter Ranch and expanding one of its locations in Valencia. The healthcare provider is also expanding in-house services, investing in new technological equipment and adding more specialty physicians to its rosters. More than anything, the decision to close the Castaic location was driven by business sense, said Bill Gil, CEO of Facey Medical Foundation. Stagnant growth and the fact that about 75 percent of the patients that visit the Castaic office are residents of the northern part of the Santa Clarita Valley, where Facey has three other clinics, propelled the closure of the 3,000 square foot facility, he said. The Castaic office has seen about 2,000 patients over the last two years, compared with upwards of 12,000 at other locations. Facey has five locations in the Santa Clarita Valley. “It is sad that we are eliminating our presence in Castaic and it is something we don’t take lightly. It’s something we haven’t done in the past, but the realities are that a two doctor office in a small community that could be equally served by moving the doctors to other locations, didn’t make much business sense to continue,” said Gil. The two doctors at the Castaic Office, expected to close in September, will continue serving their same patients at other Facey locations. Facey Medical Group has positioned itself as one of the top three medical groups in the San Fernando Valley over the course of its 85 year history, and has had a strong presence in the Santa Clarita Valley for the past 25 years. More recently Facey has expanded into the San Gabriel Valley. With no plans of slowing down, Facey is aggressively building on a model of coordinated care. Rather than a fragmented system where patients, especially those who suffer from multiple illnesses, are seen by four or five different doctors who may not necessarily review each others charts, Facey is expanding a system that provides better continuity and coordination of care among the different physicians that treat a patient. The strategy calls for increasing the number of in-house healthcare services to patients. Facey will be adding three orthopedist specialists in September to its roster of doctors. “What’s justifying the growth is that Facey continues to diversify,” said Gil. “We are growing not only by reaching out to more patients but also, for our existing 170,000 active patients, we are trying to provide more comprehensive services by adding more specialists.” By expanding services, Facey Medical Group is strengthening patient safety and improving accuracy of records, ultimately improving overall care, something that “obviously gives us a competitive advantage,” said Gil. Erik Davidov, Medical Director for the Facey Medical Group, said Facey’s coordinated care approach, enhanced by electronic medial records that facilitate access and transfer of information to in-house doctors, will better position Facey in the future. Especially as healthcare reforms call for better coordination between physicians, a reduction in overall healthcare costs and solutions to problems such as duplicative services, medical groups such as Facey will be ahead of the curve. “We’re well positioned to embrace whatever changes are coming,” Davidov said. “As time goes by we’ll be better positioned to provide services to the communities of San Fernando, Santa Clarita and San Gabriel Valleys.” The Facey model of healthcare also includes a robust hospitalist program where Facey physicians are housed permanently at local hospitals including Henry Mayo, Providence Holly Cross, Northridge Hospital and San Gabriel Valley Medical Center. These full-time hospitalists ensure that Facey patients have no delay or disruption in the care that they get when they need to be hospitalized. By expanding Facey’s facility in Valencia on the Campus of the Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital to 11,000 square feet, Gil said the organization will further enhance this coordination and continuity of care. “The health model that Facey currently uses and is continuing to grow, of a coordinated system of care, is the demand of the future, of patients and other stakeholders,” said Ken Keller, the regional director of physician business services for Providence Health & Services, California. This model has proven beneficial for patients, he said, resulting in a reduced number of hospitalizations, reduced emergency room admissions, increased compliance in taking medications, and fewer readmissions to a hospital, among other things. “I think patients are looking for a better model and I think that the better model is the one where the patient is having as many of his or her healthcare needs met by a single provider,” said Gil. “And if you look at the dominant medical groups in the communities that we serve, those that are recognized with quality awards, they tend to have one thing in common which is a diverse group of specialists so that they can collaborate with one another and optimize the care that the patients get,” he added.
