Several weeks ago, I visited Ryan O'Connor, V.P. of membership with the American Medical Group Association. I traveled with a friend to the lovely AMGA offices right next to the Potomac River in Alexandria, Va.

Ryan is a high energy guy and even though he dislocated his shoulder skiing in Colorado, he was still at work.

For those of you not familiar with the AMGA, it is an association of large medical groups and integrated health systems. Altogether, there are over 400 member organizations representing 125,000 doctors, who in turn treat 130 million patients -- more than one-third of the U.S. population.

Ryan told us that a trend they are seeing is that more and more private groups are being absorbed into local hospitals. He said it's neither good news nor bad news, it's just what's happening.

On the positive side, apparently both the physician groups and the hospitals benefit from greater economies of scale. According to Ryan, this is timely, given the shifting emphasis on paying for value and not volume.

The AMGA annual meeting takes place on March 7-10 in San Diego. For more information, go here: www.amga.org.


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