The Chicago-based physician group affiliated with Vanguard Health System — now part of Tenet Healthcare — is looking to double its size and add 70 employed physicians throughout the next year, according to a Crain's Chicago Business report.
Chicago Health System was acquired by Dallas-based Tenet in October when Tenet acquired Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanguard and its 28 hospitals. The medical group includes 1,000 physicians, 100 of whom it employs. It now wants to increase that figure to 2,000 affiliated physicians and 170 employed, according to the report.
Chicago Health CEO Patrick Sorrentino said the group is looking to build a "deep, broad" network of physicians for its accountable care organization programs, while still offering more traditional fee-for-service payment. Chicago Health's Medicare ACO was one of the first in the Medicare Shared Savings Program, and it covers about 10,000 patients. It also has a commercial ACO for about 6,000 patients that includes Tenet's local employees, according to the report.
"The aggregation of a large group of providers is stronger than individual units," he said in the report. "We want to be able to put a group together to withstand the changes that health reform is bringing."
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