MedPartners signals a sale for its large, ED contract-staffing unit
MedPartners signals a sale for its large, ED contract-staffing unit
Birmingham, AL-Problem-plagued MedPartners is putting its emergency physician contract staffing subsidiary on the auction block in an effort to increase the company's shareholder value.
Team Health, which provides some 268 hospitals in 30 states with contracted emergency physicians and radiologists and achieves annual revenue of $680 million, will be divested as part of what MedPartners described as an ongoing review of the company's asset base and "strategic opportunities." The company retained Salomon Smith Barney in New York to explore the sale of the subsidiary.
Some analysts interpreted the move as part of an ongoing restructuring by large physician organizations under continuing pricing pressures from managed care plans. Emergency medical groups have been merging and consolidating in recent years in an effort to achieve greater operating efficiency and lower costs.
But in Team Health's case, the unit is being sold off as part of a drive by MedPartners to shift away from hospital-based physician operations toward more managed care-focused physician office-based businesses. Most of Team Health's contracts with payers are fee-for-service.
Some analysts have been reported as saying that the sale is a precursor to a possible sale of the entire company. MedPartners executives deny any such move. The company has been troubled recently by a sharp drop in its stock price and a failed merger with PhyCor, another large practice management concern, in January.
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