Hospital-based practice question

[Reaganite]

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Recently accepted the professional contract in a hospital-based practice. I have only worked in a freestanding center where generating referrals was mainly up to me (dinners, bars, sporting events, strip clubs (seriously) etc.). Wasn't too hard to build my practice as the only other rad onc in town wasn't very well liked. The area where I will be expanding into, however, has a rad onc in a freestanding setting who is well-liked. I'm wondering how I can use the hospital to my advantage. Particularly, are there "referral pathways" the hospital can institute to guarantee referrals to me? For example, can I somehow be linked into the breast center, imaging center, or pathology such that any new cancer diagnosis made in the hospital can be run through me (without violating HIPAA)? If not, any other arrangements you guys are familiar with? The administration at the hospital is pretty clueless about these things and is basically relying on me.

 

[medgator]

Recently accepted the professional contract in a hospital-based practice. I have only worked in a freestanding center where generating referrals was mainly up to me (dinners, bars, sporting events, strip clubs (seriously) etc.). Wasn't too hard to build my practice as the only other rad onc in town wasn't very well liked. The area where I will be expanding into, however, has a rad onc in a freestanding setting who is well-liked. I'm wondering how I can use the hospital to my advantage. Particularly, are there "referral pathways" the hospital can institute to guarantee referrals to me? For example, can I somehow be linked into the breast center, imaging center, or pathology such that any new cancer diagnosis made in the hospital can be run through me (without violating HIPAA)? If not, any other arrangements you guys are familiar with? The administration at the hospital is pretty clueless about these things and is basically relying on me.

Do the same stuff you've been doing. Being in the hospital is a double-edged sword..... you may get the referrals from the employed docs in your system but may lose referrals from those unaffiliated docs who are unhappy with the hospital for one reason or another.

Make it clear you're an independent practitioner when you approach independent docs. I don't think the hospital will help you with your practice as much as you'll help yourself. I've also seen the situation where the hospital-based group loses referrals to the freestanding center when they really start pissing off hospital-based referrings so it really can be a fluid situation. I'm sure that won't be an issue, but it's important to realize that just like in the freestanding situation, no referral source is ever truly protected. As you can imagine, that type of situation doesn't bode well for renewal of your PSA.

 

[OTN]

I agree with the above, more or less. You're going to get the hospital referrals pretty easily, but the non-affiliated docs will naturally stick with the radonc at the freestanding center.