As more cardiology and cardiovascular procedures shift toward the ASC setting, there could be a swing in consolidation in the industry, according to David Konur, CEO of Cardiovascular Logistics.
Cardiovascular Logistics, a national cardiovascular platform, recently partnered with Cardiology Consultants of Philadelphia, the largest independent cardiology practice in the U.S.
With the addition, CVL expanded its network to nearly 450 physicians and 30 practice locations.
Mr. Konur recently connected with Becker’s to give his insights on how the company stands out and where the industry might be headed.
Note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: How does Cardiovascular Logistics set itself apart from other MSOs and groups in the cardiovascular industry?
David Konur: Our team, the founding practice, our management team, has been together for 20 plus years. All of us have been focused only on cardiovascular medicine, so we’re not cobbling together a management team from 10 different industries to try and figure out how to change cardiovascular care. And as a result, we’ve been very disciplined on who we bring into our platform. This isn’t about growing for the sake of growth. This is about truly finding partners, where each partner actually makes the entire platform better. I think there’s no better example than CCP joining. They have been thought leaders in our field for decades, and they’re going to bring great vision and leadership to our platform.
Q: What challenges are independent cardiology practices and employed cardiologists facing?
DK: The independent practices, 90% of them, have less than 10 physicians in their practices, and at such a small size, just the administrative burden of complying with the regulations that are out there is incredibly costly. To compete for a workforce post-COVID is incredibly challenging in healthcare overall, generally speaking. What we’ve seen over the last 15 years within our specialty is that we went from less than 15% of the cardiologists employed by hospitals to now 70% to 75% employed by hospitals. That didn’t happen because they were excited and wanted to go to work for a hospital, that happened because of a decrease in diagnostic reimbursement that forced cardiologists into hospital employment.
For those of us that are coming together to form a platform like CVL, our physicians are leading our effort. CVL is majority physician owned and it is certainly physician led. We have now 15 physician advisory councils that meet to try to come up with everything from policy through how to improve care for all of our patients. We’ve been really particular in who we invite into our partnership. We turn down 80% to 90% of the practices that asked to join just based on philosophy, because, again, our focus is all about the patient that has proven to be a very successful model for us. There’ll be headwinds, but together, we’re certainly much stronger, and we’re seeing the benefits of scale.
Q: What are you anticipating in terms of consolidation in cardiology?
DK: I certainly believe that as we see site-of-service differential go away in diagnostic imaging between the HOPD rates and the outpatient world, and as Medicare continues to shift its focus on cardiovascular care being treated more in the outpatient arena than the inpatient arena, we’re going to see more and more hospital hospitals looking for alternatives to how they’re going to deal with their cardiology programs. If site-of-service differential goes away, there is going to be a huge influx of cardiologists looking to join platforms like ours, and we’re already talking to almost a dozen groups that are very interested in what that would look like, because as they read the tea leaves, they see that coming as well.
That pendulum that swung all the way over to hospital employment, we see that starting to swing back the other way. I would expect to see an increase in consolidation in the specialty. I think this partnership is a great example of the leaders within cardiovascular medicine coming together. Our platform is not a roll up play where we’re trying to roll up a bunch of small practices from all over the place. We’re bringing together the true thought leaders that have been thought leaders for decades to fundamentally change how we deliver care in our country.
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