Blue Shield of Calif. company Altais to acquire large physician group
Blue Shield of California venture Altais is acquiring Brown & Toland Physicians, a medical group serving 350,000 patients in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Altais, a healthcare services company Blue Shield launched last year, said the acquisition is meant to help Brown & Toland’s network of 2,700 physicians stay largely independent by supporting them with the technology needed to succeed in value-based care and alleviating the administrative burden that leads to burnout. It’s Altais’ first acquisition.
Altais CEO Dr. Jeff Bailet said the company will provide Oakland, Calif.-based Brown & Toland with capital and a technology platform that includes practice management tools, predictive analytics and telehealth capabilities, and will help the medical group roll out an electronic health record.
Kelly Robison, Brown & Toland’s CEO, said the partnership would allow the medical group to expand its footprint geographically. Its physicians currently practice in seven California counties.
Robison said it has become tougher for physician groups to keep up with the changing healthcare system when not part of a larger organization. Less than half of physicians owned their own practices in 2018, according to the American Medical Association.
Blue Shield created Altais to provide those tools so physicians don’t join health systems. When they do, costs inevitability rise, Bailet said. A 2014 study by Stanford University researchers found that hospital acquisition of physician practices led to significant increases in hospital prices and spending.
Bailet explained that Altais’ acquisition of Brown & Toland won’t have that effect because Altais doesn’t own any hospitals and is not requiring physicians to keep its referrals within a high-cost hospital system. When asked if Blue Shield members would be steered toward Brown & Toland physicians, Bailet said Altais operates as a separate organization from the insurer with firewalls in place to protect information. Altais and Brown & Toland will continue to work with all health plans, he said. ●