Woodcreek Provider Services
Women’s & Family Health Specialists was a combined OB-GYN/family medicine group based in Renton, Washington. In existence for over 30 years, WFHS saw thousands of patients each year in the South King County community; however, financial pressures eventually forced the owners to seek sale of the practice to an area healthcare system. Ultimately, the decision was made to close the practice.
Closing a medical practice is a complicated project. On top of winding down the underlying corporation itself, it involves notifying patients, insurance partners, and vendors; planning for malpractice tail coverage; negotiating early ends to space and equipment leases; disposition of equipment; long-term medical records storage with a designated medical records custodian, and a host of smaller tasks that must be completed.
“We felt that contracting an outside service to complete our winddown was the way to go,” says Emily Balser, MD, WFHS’ president. “Our incoming revenue wasn’t sufficient to keep staff members employed to do this work so WPS provided us the necessary support to complete our closure.”
Our Solution
WPS provided informal advice to the practice as they began their winddown project, helping them with suggestions around revenue management and notification plans.
Ultimately, we were contracted to complete final collections on outstanding balances, deliver their hardcopy medical and billing records to a custodian, and complete the various tasks necessary to close the business for good. “We felt that contracting an outside service to complete our winddown was the way to go,” says Emily Balser, MD, WFHS’ president. “Our incoming revenue wasn’t sufficient to keep staff members employed to do this work so WPS provided us the necessary support to complete our closure.”
The group kept employees working for three months to close as much of the accounts receivable as possible, and then formally handed everything over to WPS for closure.
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Outcome
WPS operated the practice for approximately nine months, during which time we secured a long-term agreement with a custodian to store hardcopy medical records and provide release services for the next 30 years (the long timeframe was required because many of the records were on pediatric patients). Further, we posted the remaining collections from outstanding accounts receivable and provided credit balance refunds where appropriate, reporting some to the state’s Unclaimed Property office.
We also wound down the practice itself, disposing of remaining IT assets and providing final reporting to the state corporations office on the practice’s closure.
Long-term messaging was created for the practice’s website describing how to obtain medical and billing records from the custodian, and generally providing public information about the decision to close the group.
“Woodcreek really took care of us,” Dr. Balser says. “They understood the challenges we felt saying goodbye to something we worked so hard to build. We weren’t sure how we could get it all done, especially with our limited resources, and we were pleased that they took care of everything competently and professionally.”