Working together with our physicians

An article in the May 9, 2005, issue of the New York Law Journal refers to the historically “symbiotic” or mutually beneficial relationship between hospitals and physicians.

“Without physicians, hospitals would not be able to provide a full range of health care services to individuals; without hospitals, doctors would be limited in their ability to fully care for their patients,” says the author of the piece, David A. Manko, an attorney who represents hospitals in a wide range of health care matters including mergers and acquisitions.

“Hospitals offer the environment—including sophisticated (and costly) equipment, technology, support staff and management systems—in which modern medicine can be practiced, while physicians have the patients, knowledge, ability and skill to utilize all that today’s hospitals make available to them.”

A healthy symbiosis of hospital and physician has always been important to FirstHealth of the Carolinas, which dates its first such partnership from the opening of Moore County Hospital and the recruitment of Dr. Clement R. Monroe as its first surgeon-manager (a quaint term for physician and administrator).

At that point in the hospital’s history, the late 1920s, and for several years into its future, it was almost impossible to separate the hospital from the physician, for in addition to his duties as a surgeon, Dr. Monroe oversaw the hospital’s day-to-day operation, managing everything from staffing and equipment to maintenance and even menu planning. Despite the passage of more than 75 years and veritable light years in the advancement of health care, the hospital-physician relationship is just as intertwined—but in a different way.

In the late 1990s, when FirstHealth of the Carolinas adopted its 2020 Vision, a guide for health care in the 21st century, its physicians endorsed the “Working Together, First in Quality, First in Health” pledge. Since then, FirstHealth and its physicians have advanced the hospital-physician relationship with the development of a series of unique partnerships, all designed to enhance patient services and care.

They include:

• The Surgery Center of Pinehurst (SCoP), a joint venture between FirstHealth and area surgeons to operate a new ambulatory surgery center in the FirstVillage complex on the Moore Regional Hospital campus
• The related Surgery Center of Pinehurst Properties —formed between FirstHealth and area surgeons and non-surgeons to manage the SCoP real estate property
• Mobile Diagnostics of the Carolinas, a partnership between FirstHealth and Pinehurst Cardiology Consultants to deliver state-of-the-art cardiac testing procedures to patients in Hoke, Montgomery, Robeson and Sampson counties
• The Specialty Clinics Division at Moore Regional Hospital (see related story on page 24) that houses the Chest Center of the Carolinas, the Bariatric Center and a new Esophageal Center in hospital quarters
• First Imaging of the Carolinas, a partnership between FirstHealth and Pinehurst Radiology Group to offer PET imaging, the most advanced technology for diagnosing various types of cancer and certain other diseases
• FirstHealth management and staff support of nuclear cardiology and CT scanning services at Pinehurst Medical Clinic
• FirstHealth management and staff support of current CT and MRI services at Pinehurst Surgical Ongoing discussions with Pinehurst Medical Clinic involving a comprehensive medical oncology partnership

Still other innovative partnerships are on the horizon, and you will be hearing about them—some sooner rather than later—as FirstHealth’s mutually beneficial hospital-physician relationship continues to reflect what David Manko calls “the growing complexity of the health care system in this country.”

Charles T. Frock
Chief Executive Officer
FirstHealth of the Carolinas