UNIHEALTH: Sells ‘Flagship’ Physician Group to Docs
A group of 150 doctors purchased Huntington Provider Group, the flagship physician organization of Burbank-based UniHealth, the Los Angeles Times reports. The buyers already were affiliated with the company. Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, the purchase included Huntington's contracts to care for 150,000 patients in Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, but excluded its current debts. Renamed Physician Associates of Greater San Gabriel Valley, the new organization intentionally has been set up to avoid some of the financial woes currently troubling many of the state's physicians groups. The group will operate as a single professional company -- rather than as a medical group married to a management company -- to ensure that profits are not pulled from funds allocated for patient care. In addition, the company will take precautions to prevent "undue emphasis on individual financial gain" by limiting ownership of the organization to participating physicians. Those physicians will be allowed to purchase no more than $100,000 of company equity, and each physician will be allotted one vote in the entity. The deal's closing date is set for Dec. 15, with the new ownership taking over on Jan. 1 (Bernstein, 11/23).
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