Two Physician Groups Merge, Creating Largest Primary Care Network in Denver Metro

Denver, CO, November 24, 2015 --(PR.com)-- Two primary care Independent Practice Associations (IPAs) will merge contracts and management on Jan. 1, 2016, creating the largest group of primary care physicians in the Denver metro area. Primary Physician Partners (PPP), covering the north and west portions of the metro area, and South Metro Primary Care (SMPC), covering the south and east areas, are joining forces as PHPprime to provide coordinated and innovative health care to the approximately 375,000 Coloradoans they serve with primary medical care.

Collectively, PHPprime will have more than 320 primary care providers including family practice physicians, geriatricians, and internal medicine physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. The group consists of 85 clinically integrated and community-minded medical practices.

“The health care dynamic is changing rapidly and the smaller, independent practices are being swallowed by large health systems and reducing competition and choice,” said Gerald Brown, MD, Chairman of the PHPprime board and practicing physician at Internal Medicine Southwest. “We are banding together as PHPprime to keep independent primary care physicians in practice and provide a great choice for patients to find health care.”

At the first of the year, the PHPprime physician group will join together on the following contracts:
- Aetna Commercial ACO: 14,477 attributed patients
- Anthem Enhanced Personal Care Program: 24,330 attributed patients
- Cigna Accountable Care: 37,156 attributed patients
- Medicare Shared Savings Program: 30,147 attributed patients
- UnitedHealthcare Commercial ACO: 42,749 attributed patients
- UnitedHealthcare AARP Medicare Complete Medicare Advantage plan: 26,698 attributed patients

Total: 175,557 total attributed patients

PHPprime is managed by Physician Health Partners, a Denver area medical management company who provides care coordination, data analytics and aggregation, contracting, clinical quality improvement coaches, coding expertise and practice support to all of the participating physician practices.

“We are excited to have this great group of physicians working together across the entire Denver metro area as part of PHPprime,” Kenneth Nielsen, Physician Health Partners’ President and CEO said. “These practices work so hard to improve care for their patients and create innovative solutions to problems, and by combining their groups, they will have increased opportunity to achieve these goals.”