If you’ve read my articles on exclusive contract negotiation or read about the Strategic Group Process, you know that my view is that almost all of the instances of a group’s organization and operation are related . . . that either they are managed in order to achieve success or they are treated silo-like (or even ignored), resulting in stagnation and failure.
In an educational setting (not a client engagement), I was recently asked whether a physician member of a group, a partner, could opt out of a new managed care agreement being entered into by the group. I was told that the carrier didn’t care if he did.
I found the question to be rather funny. The real question is not one of managed care contracting; after all the affected carrier consented. Rather, the real question is whether the group cares that it is slowly ceasing to be a group.
Letting each partner write his or her terms of partnership is not a long term strategy for success, it’s a short term strategy for failure.
