Earlier this spring, the leaders at Summit Medical Group and its affiliate, CityMD, announced a new brand identity, combining the operations of both organizations under the name Summit Health. The combined entity published the announcement on March 18.
As the press release noted, “Setting the course for continued health care innovation and unified growth, Summit Medical Group, the premier physician-owned and governed multispecialty group, and CityMD, the leading urgent care provider in the New York metropolitan area, today announced a new brand identity and positioning that reflects the enterprise formed by their 2019 merger. Beginning today, the combined organization's corporate identity, as well as the century-old brand name of the multispecialty group, is Summit Health. CityMD will continue to operate under its existing brand name with an endorsement line identifying it as ‘A Summit Health Company.’”
And the release quoted Jeffrey Le Benger, M.D., the CEO of Summit Health as stating that "Our growth, resilience, and progress over the first extraordinary months of our merger is remarkable. This major rebrand represents our vision to create a new kind of health care that builds on our strengths and provides a seamless patient experience that is connected by the collective expertise of our physicians, providers and employees,” Dr. Le Benger said.
Further, "The emergence of the Summit Health brand is about more than just a new name or logo. It brings unity and focus to our operations, while also delivering an enlightening, compassionate, and connected experience that is orchestrated around the patient," said Matt Gove, Summit Health’s chief marketing officer. "The fresh, modern logo and brand identity evoke the feeling of connection on many meaningful levels."
As the press release noted, “Summit Health is committed to simplifying health care—for patients, providers, and those who support them. By designing a care experience that's intuitive, comprehensive, and responsive, Summit Health can ensure that patients get the care they need efficiently, easily, and conveniently; and, that providers get the support they need to stay focused on care and passionate about their work. The result is health care that is more compassionate, considerate, and human – a more connected kind of care.”
The release noted that “Summit Health has more than 1,600 providers, 8,000 employees and over 200 locations in New Jersey and New York, as well as more than 130 providers and six locations in Central Oregon – previously known as Summit Medical Group Oregon.”
Recently, Dr. Le Benger spoke with Healthcare Innovation Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland regarding his vision for Summit Health, and his perspectives on the current policy, payment, and strategic landscape for multispecialty physician groups in U.S. healthcare. Below are excerpts from that interview.
How would you describe your organizational strategy overall right now?
Let me tell you where we’re headed, and then I’ll fill you in on the brand change. We have about 1,800 providers in the New York metropolitan area. We have the fully integrated model, and our merger with CityMD allowed us to increase our access points for care. And we continue to show that, in our healthcare model, we always, always end up in the top quartile in quality and outcomes, in our integrated model, as well as the financial norms—we always lower the total cost of care. We’ve proven it over and over again. Even through COVID, our customer service was rated at 85. And when we combined with CityMD, it allowed us to create an unbelievable position for access. We increased dramatically our virtual visits during COVID, we increased access. And we handled over 4-5 million visits during the pandemic and related to COVID, an additional 4 million visits.
So we’ve shown that we can scale and take care of population. We have a really robust data analytics department that’s showed us that we can scale up, as we move further into risk-based contracting. And still during COVID, we were able to add over 150 net new providers, and brought up 16 new urgent care sites, during COVID. And we have plans for next year, budgeted. And we’re bringing on over 300 new providers now in the first quarter, as well as 18 new urgent care sites in the NY/NJ metro market, and we’re increasing our hub-and-spoke to our integrated care model, with approximately six major hubs that run between 20,000 and 100,000 square feet each.
We’re continuing to build out our robust care model from NJ into NY—the boroughs, LI, and Westchester. And this coincides with our rebrand to Summit Health. Are we going to change how e care for patients? No. We’re just going to become more robust in our presence. And in another month from now, we’ll be bringing out a digital app to help patients navigate the HC system: online scheduling, virtual visits, preregistration, bill-pay, pharmacy—everything you need.
What have you found to be the critical success factors for your organization’s success, even during the COVID-19 pandemic?
We are a physician-run, physician-driven organization; our bylaws revolve around patient care, and everything is run by physicians. When you have a group practice with the same ownership, and when you work based on mission, vision, and values, and you develop trust, and you have loyalty to your mission, it works. It all has to do with trust in the physician-led leadership in the organization. I think that’s why we’re successful. Yes, you have to have the right business partners to help you manage capital and handle growth. But if the group trusts the leadership, that’s where you become successful. And we’ve gone from 150 providers to over 300 providers in one year, with only a 2-percent turnover. That shows trust in the model and the providers, and in the system you have, in order to be able to grow.
Can you speak to the role of physician culture in your success to date?
We absolutely look at physician culture as we continue to move forward. Everyone talks about physician burnout and frustration within the practice; we have a very robust behavioral health department for our patients, but we also use it for our physicians. And we have physicians managing other physicians. So, after taking care of the patient, we look at after the providers, and in particular, we strive to help them achieve a work-life balance. A lot of the analytics we’re going to build on are based on trying to make office life better, for work-life balance. We do things to make the physicians appreciate the practice of medicine and to focus on their being able to put a hand on the patient and talk to the patient.
I still practice as a head and neck surgeon; I operated today and did cases. So I know what it’s like to be a physician, to live healthcare; and it really helps in leading an organization if you’re entrenched, so you know what your doctors feel, what your patients feel. But I don’t want to make this personal; this is about the group.
Clearly, over the past few decades, the physician culture has changed inside U.S. healthcare. But practicing-physician alignment remains key to making advances in so many areas. How does that element fit into your continuous clinical performance improvement efforts?
In our practice, we have quality dashboards that every doctor sees within the organization. We also have a structure of department heads, chairs, and service line chiefs, who look at manage elements in the organization; I have a chief of quality in the organization. Someone said this in baseball, one of the major league managers—he was asked what makes for a good manager? Good ballplayers. If you hire really good doctors, and you have a consistent way that you practice in the organization, and then you have benchmarking and you monitor the quality metrics of all your doctors, and you compensate based on those metrics, you drive the behaviors you want in your organization.
What will be happening in the next couple of years in your organization? Will you continue to amplify your efforts, your path?
Yes, absolutely, amplifying our path will be our focus. And everything is moving to the outpatient marketplace. And we want to continue to drive the cost of medicine down with good quality metrics, and with physician satisfaction. We have an excellent MPS score of 85. And what will also drive this is the move into capitated products in the marketplace, such as managed Medicare, the Medicare demonstration products; and we will also look to move into this self-insured commercial area, moving towards capitation, where you really have good control over the cost of care.
You sound optimistic about your organization’s future.
Well, it was very unfortunate what happened with COVID, but we’re hoping that by September or October, most people will have been vaccinated. And I think the economy will start to come back within the next one to two years, and I think that that will come back within the next year or two.
And I feel like a racecar driver; I don’t even look into the rearview mirror. I look at how we can create a model that delivers high quality, great outcomes, to the population. That’s really what I am so excited about. and we are spending tens of millions of dollars on data analytics, and coming out with the digital apps, and doing everything we can, to manage gaps in care, and improve the digital experience, and to lower the total cost of care. We’ve proven it in the past, and I look forward to continue proving it in the New Jersey/New York/Connecticut metropolitan area. My mantra has been in place since day one. And that’s another key to our success in terms of managing the patient well, is that we continue our mission and vision and values, and we don’t give in on that.
