Corpractica Client Experience

The Ambient Anesthesia Story

As told by Dr. Matthew Phillips, MD, President of Ambient Anesthesia (Houston)
Copractica member since 2019

We’ve been a small-to-midsize anesthesia group for almost 25 years. We’ve really strived to maintain our independence. With Copractica, we’ve doubled the size of our practice — and we’re still growing. The infrastructure is there.

Our Story: Reclaiming Our Independence

In 2019 we were with STAR anesthesia, a big group in San Antonio. We joined them to keep our independence and to fight off some of these VCs by being part of a larger consortium. About a year and a half after we joined Star, they decided to sell their practice to USAP, one of the largest VC groups.

At that point we had already given up our billing company and had changed our model drastically. We were trying to find a way to maintain our independence and be able to survive. Having to go back to scratch from getting contracts with insurance carriers — it was just a nightmare.

We called a few different groups in the area. All of them except for Copractica (then IPN) would have required us to give them exclusivity to all our contracts and essentially become employees. Copractica was one of the only options that we found (and that I’m still aware of) where you can maintain your independence as a practice.

We want to be able to dictate how much vacation we take, we want to dictate our salaries, and what type of work we do on a day-to-day basis. Once you give those decisions away, they’re gone.

Onboarding

Copractica was able to offer fairly competitive rates and to offer services that we would need as a company, like a 401(k) retirement plan or health insurance benefits. Billing and credentialing processes as well. The transition was fairly seamless. They came in and listened to us and said ‘What’s the best avenue forward.’

Copractica’s Partnership

Copractica’s team brings a ton of experience and invaluable advice, and points out intricate things we can use to maximize the best potential for the practice when we’re in negotiating situations.

Clinical & Organizational Growth

In this last six-month period we’ve acquired another hospital system contract. The Copractica team spent countless hours with me over the holidays, helping me prepare slides for the bid, showing what our projected collections would be and where we are relative to the market — things that exemplified why the hospital should use us rather than other groups in line for that business. It would have been very challenging to get the contract without their support.

With this new hospital contract we have essentially doubled the size of our practice.

Delivering on Collections

I can negotiate more easily [with hospitals] when our contract cycles are up knowing that the hospital is happy with our collections. They say ‘Your collections have been really good.’ Copractica is instrumental in doing that. That’s something our hospital partners have complimented Copractica on over the years.

Copractica’s Transparency

Copractica is very transparent. I tell everyone ‘They are going to be very honest about what they providing and they’re going to be very honest about how they provide it.’ Nobody’s perfect. You won’t find a service that’s ever perfect. But when mistakes happen, Copractica owns up to them immediately and makes them right. In our day and age, I think that’s hard to find.

If you go join a big company, they’re going to say here’s what we’ve got take it or leave it. We can adapt and we can change, because we work hard to stay independent.