Faculty Practice Plans

The faculty practice plan (FPP) is an integral component of the academic enterprise, and many have become multimillion-dollar businesses critical to the success of teaching hospitals and medical schools. Accordingly, a strong FPP is of strategic importance to the academic medical center (AMC); however, many FPPs are confronted by strategic, organizational, and operational challenges. As a result, FPPs and their partners within AMCs are exploring new organizational relationships, reexamining collaborative institutional goals, evaluating the appropriateness of historical financial arrangements, and seeking creative approaches to managing revenue-producing, cost-effective clinical operations. These and numerous other factors have fostered the trend toward the development of increasingly sophisticated FPPs at AMCs throughout the country.

Transforming FPPs to respond to forces in the current environment of academic medicine requires organizational, strategic, and business planning; consensus building; and willingness to accept change. FPPs and their AMC partners must assess whether changes are required to support the strategic priorities of hospitals. Further, they must determine what structure best supports their operations and must operate at a level that supports their strategic goals and fosters the academic mission of medical schools. Consequently, practice plan engagements typically require management consulting skills in multiple functional areas. ECG provides the following types of services to FPPs:

• Organizational Structuring and Governance Design – Developing, enhancing, and implementing FPP organization and governance arrangements.

• Strategic and Business Planning – Identifying strategic objectives, including alignment with medical school and hospital interests, and developing plans to support and respond to market demands.

• Inter-AMC and Intra-FPP Financial Arrangements – Designing funds flow arrangements between FPPs and their AMC partners, as well as structuring financial arrangements within practice plans that align economic incentives with mission objectives.

• Compensation Plan Design – Creating faculty compensation plans that support strategic goals and foster faculty physician recruitment and retention.

• FPP and Departmental Diagnostic Performance Evaluations – Examining and identifying the root causes of inadequate performance and recommending specific interventions to strengthen financial performance.

• Operations Improvement – Addressing administrative infrastructure improvements to accounting, human resources, marketing, billing, and contracting functions, in addition to ambulatory care operations analysis, planning, and performance improvements.

ECG is able to design and implement solutions to the problems faced by FPPs. We assist FPPs not only through an evaluation process that diagnoses opportunities, but also through implementation of the identified improvements. As a result of our work, FPPs achieve measurable improvements in organizational, operational, and financial performance. Selected examples of clients with whom we have recently worked include: