Management Services Organization Marks 10th Anniversary

On September 1, Emergency Associates of Colorado, LLC, (EAC) celebrated 10 years in management, and looked forward to the next decade of serving physicians groups in Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming, and other states.

(PRWEB) September 1, 2005 -- Emergency Associates of Colorado, LLC, began in 1995 with a handshake between two emergency physicians at a Denver Nuggets basketball game.

The management company they started has grown to serve eight emergency physician groups and one hospitalist group. EAC manages over 250 providers in Colorado, Arizona, and Wyoming, and is the parent company of Emergency Associates of Arizona, PLLC, (EAA) and Emergency Associates of Wyoming, LLC, (EAW).

Besides growth, EAC's founders reflect upon other important accomplishments at the 10-year mark.

"Still the flagship program for EAC is the Comprehensive Risk Management Program," said founding physician Pete Vellman, MD, of Western Emergency Physicians, PC. "It has been very successful in managing risk and managing premium costs for our groups."

"Early on we were able to negotiate a ten-year hospital professional services contract with Centura for all four owner groups. That was virtually unheard of," recalls founding physician Jim Huber, MD, of Emergency Physicians at Porter Hospitals, PC.

The overarching accomplishment of EAC after its first 10 years is "getting to the concept of excellence in support for our physician groups, being able to provide service to them so that when they come and ask us for something what they're going to get back is at least what they expected and probably more," said Chief Executive Officer Hal Watz, MD, of Front Range Emergency Specialists, PC.

EAC has also helped a physician group in Arizona to get on its feet as an independent entity, and hopes to do that again in Wyoming and elsewhere.

Where EAC is getting it right where other large ED management groups aren't, said Dr. Vellman, is in a philosophy of building a strong foundation for emergency department groups, then turning the ownership back to the groups.

The founders of EAC look forward to a great future.

"First, I'd like EAC to continue to stress quality medicine," said Huber. "Then, I'd like EAC to be innovative about bringing physician groups together, particularly within our own specialty. Third, I'd like EAC to be a profitable investment for its owners, and to become even more financially viable than it is now."

Said Watz, "I'd like to see EAC be able to export the risk management program to other states, and have the other states and insurers appreciate the strength of the program and the benefits. I'd like to see EAC be able to expand and help other emergency physician and hospitalist groups receive the benefit of the management services that EAC can provide."

"Continued solid growth is what I'd like to see," said Vellman. "But, I never want to see us get so big that we're not offering the valued service to our clients that we were built on. One of the things we've done is expand beyond emergency medicine to hospitalist groups. We could look at other hospital-based groups to manage, anesthesiology, pathology, and more."

Vellman, who is the Chairman of the Board of Managers at EAC, added, "I think it would be wonderful if we could play a role in solving some big issues like dealing with over crowding in the ER, the subspecialty on-call issue, the rising number of uninsured patients and illegal immigrant patients, and dealing with the new technologies that emergency medicine may be dealing with. I just think there are some great opportunities ahead for us."

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