Looking to expand its offerings in the Lowcountry and around the state, the health system of the Medical University of South Carolina acquired a large independent doctor group for $111 million.<\/p>\n
The Board of Trustees of Medical University Hospital Authority, which oversees MUSC Health, voted to acquire Palmetto Primary Care Physicians<\/a> during a special called meeting March 2. The name and price of the acquisition was not disclosed until March 3 due to a nondisclosure agreement.<\/p>\n Palmetto Primary Care says it is the largest independent group of doctors left in South Carolina, with 31 physicians and 95 other advanced practitioners at 40 clinics around the state, including the Lowcountry, Midlands and Grand Strand. The group has been around since 1996.<\/p>\n MUSC Health has traditionally been more heavily focused on specialty care and \u201chas had good primary care but I wouldn\u2019t say we have a lot of primary care,\u201d said MUSC Health CEO Patrick J. Cawley. But it turns out that primary care is often the thing most requested by patients and also by employees, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople want a primary care doctor to help guide them and their families through health care, and we need more primary care in the system,\u201d Cawley said.<\/p>\n Often, patients will come to MUSC to see a specialist but also need primary care, and sometimes that referral \u201chas not been possible because we simply don’t have the numbers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also a response to population growth and MUSC\u2019s overall expansion.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the growth (of) the number of people in the area, with the growth of MUSC, we simply do not have enough primary care to take care of everybody that wants it,\u201d Cawley said.<\/p>\n It follows a national trend of consolidating health care into larger systems, according to a report last year<\/a> from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.<\/p>\n Doctors are increasingly working for hospital systems directly, from 29 percent in 2012 to nearly half of all physicians in 2024, the report found. It can be a better deal for the physicians, where the cost of the practice is borne by a bigger entity that has economies of scale to spread out expenses over a larger enterprise and also negotiate better rates, the GAO noted. But it can also lead to less competition in health care, the report said.<\/p>\n