Practice Made Perfect by TeamHealth

Our good health and well-being are one of the most important elements that we require to live happily. The rapid pace of advancements in healthcare is radically changing the dimension of healthcare today. Be it 3-D printing of organs or technology that modifies the DNA, healthcare has undergone multitudes of developments.

TeamHealth is one such company that offers careers, staffing, and opportunities for all subspecialties in healthcare. It is a physician-led patient-focused company that was founded by doctors and is for doctors. Its success builds on the ingenuity, dedicated teamwork and integrity of its people. Today, TeamHealth is celebrating more than three decades of experience in physician services.

With a purpose to perfect physicians’ ability to practice medicine, every day, in everything it does, the foundation of TeamHealth was laid. It has a simple philosophy and a singular goal. “We believe better experiences for physicians lead to better outcomes—for patients, partners, and physicians alike,” says the CEO and President of TeamHealth, Leif M. Murphy.

A Pathway for Healthcare

There are over 19,000 clinicians and the company offers the highest quality staffing, administrative support, and management. “We’ve grown from a small company established by emergency physicians to one of the largest integrated care providers in the country,” proudly notes Leif. From hospital-based practices to post-acute care and ambulatory centers, TeamHealth caters across the full continuum of care.

“We started in Emergency Medicine, and expanded to additional hospital-based practices and also serve post-acute care and ambulatory centers,” he adds. The setting doesn’t matter, he says, the innovative service enhances quality and efficiency.

When the partners rely on TeamHealth to help in various departments, the company advantage shines even brighter. Patients and clinicians experience better continuity of care and hospitals see the power of an integrated performance. 

Areas of Expertise

Here’s a list of areas of expertise that TeamHealth delivers:

• Emergency Medicine

TeamHealth provides compassionate care for patients on their worst days during emergencies. TeamHealth provides the best care when it comes to Emergency Medicine innovation. And not to forget its contribution to medical director leadership, recruiting and retaining the best emergency clinicians, and improving clinical throughout time. “In all of these areas, we stand out in our ability to deliver on our promises through a winning combination of cutting-edge healthcare technology, teamwork, and LEAN processes,” says Leif.

• Anesthesiology

TeamHealth is pioneering care management inside and outside the operating room. With TeamHealth’s anesthesiology services, it is confident that the only people happier than your surgeons will be the patients themselves. In fact, the anesthesia program has been proven to increase surgeon and patient satisfaction, while optimizing operating room performance. “Whether you’re looking to add our deep clinical expertise, our field-tested OR protocols, or our metrics-driven approach, your anesthesiology department becomes our priority when you’re our partner,” he adds.

• Hospital Medicine

TeamHealth has been an innovator in hospital medicine since the early 90s. This clearly proves the number of admissions under its lab coats! Hospital medicine is one of the fastest growing specialty, and with its strategic vision across the continuum of care and stellar day-to-day performance, clients will be able to focus on growth. At every opportunity, TeamHealth dissolves siloes and align incentives and training to improve communication, efficiencies, and outcomes. “Our strategies deliver lower costs, shorter lengths of stay, better medical outcomes for acutely ill patients, a solution for unassigned patients, and overall higher satisfaction,” Leif announces.

• Hospital Medicine Subspecialties

TeamHealth has quality, devotion and a practice model built around a specific practice area. The company, fortunately, provides specialty services that fix for patient diversions, longer stays, lost revenue, and damaged reputation. Its guaranteed call coverage and in-house specialty coverage improves the emergent surgical experience. TeamHealth can turn program costs into incremental revenue. It can also optimize for reimbursement, and ensure compliance and quality care with its prized on-site physician leadership and quality improvement programs. “By removing the call burden from your specialists, we add surgical volume, increase market share, improve throughput, and save you money,” he explains.  

• Ambulatory Care

TeamHealth’s ambulatory care is a unique blueprint for treatment and attention, tailored to the individual patient. Every ambulatory care program it develops, designs, staffs, and manages is built in and around the local community. “As we direct the process from site selection and construction to day-to-day operations, we ensure each center is a care-enhancing, brand-promoting component of your ambulatory service line,” Leif notes.

• Post-Acute Care

Quality care begins with understanding each patient’s unique needs. TeamHealth is empathetic, attentive and engaged in each patient’s experience and the individual challenges faced at every stage of transitional care. Each post-acute care patient has a story, and put simply, listening well is how it builds individualized patient plans for the next steps in a patient’s journey. Each plan is focused and checked in collaboration with the collective knowledge of more than 400 post-acute care teams. These teams at TeamHealth share the best practices, lessons learned, and evidence-based data to improve care across the board. The company believes that individualized attention defines not only the way it treats patients in post-acute care, but also how it treats its clinicians. “It’s our belief that when our clinicians feel cared for, they’re better equipped to care for your patients,” he expresses.

• Behavioral Health

When it comes to integrating behavioral health in every facility or health system, there is no particular path or one-size-fits-all approach. TeamHealth specializes in partnering with facilities like yours to achieve a fully integrated care model that addresses all patient needs. Through a collaborative partnership, TeamHealth provides quality tools and resources for client’s facility. “We can staff your facility with board-certified psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, and psychologists,” Leif explains. “These clinicians collaborate with the medical team and use their knowledge, skills, and compassion to expertly treat the whole patient.”

Building Relationships

TeamHealth believes that ‘collective success is the only true measure of a job well done.’ The best part about TeamHealth is that its leaders not only have a strong vision, but also have a heart. Aside from their impressive qualifications, the leaders at TeamHealth are incredibly passionate about serving the people they work with, their clients, and their patients.

Right from the top, till down below, the company ensures a physician-friendly environment. Everyone performs through its Paired Leadership Philosophy, where it matches seasoned physicians with top business minds who are fervent supporters of quality and innovation in patient care.

TeamHealth steadfastly believes that in doing the right thing, there will definitely be a better outcome for everyone. This is why it genuinely forges relationships among its team members and also in the facilities where they work and the communities they serve.

From new clinicians just starting their careers to seasoned medical directors, the entire company works as a team in every sense of the word. “To attract the best, we make sure our clinicians have manageable caseloads so they can focus on the quality of care, and we offer all the bells and whistles clinicians deserve, like generous compensation, PLI coverage, incentives, career growth opportunities, flexible schedules, and free CME,” says Leif.

Compliance and Ethics

“At TeamHealth, we are committed to providing the best place for patients to receive care, physicians to practice medicine, and our associates to work,” says the CEO. Also, at the same time, the company is committed to complying with all the laws, rules, and regulations that govern the business and earning and maintaining the confidence of the investors.

Therefore, in keeping up with these commitments, TeamHealth has established a compliance and ethics program. With a purpose to deter, detect, and prevent fraud, abuse, and mistakes, the compliance and ethics program highlights the best of the company.

Moreover, the compliance and ethics program has been designed and developed consistently with the office of inspector general’s compliance program guidance. TeamHealth knows that the elements of an effective compliance and ethics program are important in the organizational sentencing guidelines.

Moreover, TeamHealth maintains a legislative action center. “We care about improving healthcare, not only for our own patients, but across the country,” explains Leif. The legislative action center makes it easy to track any upcoming events and votes.

TeamHealth also keeps its commitment and dedicates its time and resources to important policy initiatives. For instance, Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and the extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program are some of the focused areas where TeamHealth is dedicated on improving access to healthcare for both children and adults.

True Story

Here’s a true story of the clinical integration at TeamHealth at the Baptist Memorial Hospital Union County, New Albany. The Baptist Memorial Hospital Union County (BMH-UH) had previously partnered with TeamHealth way back in 2008 for emergency medicine services. Now, the hospital was looking for even better operational and economic efficiencies. And so, the hospital called on TeamHealth to implement a collaborative model between the emergency medicine and hospital medicine service lines.

The model that TeamHealth built for emergency medicine and hospital medicine providers has a collaborative set of goals and responsibilities to ensure efficient, cost-effective patient flow across the continuum of care. With a goal to help the hospital, TeamHealth helped BMH-UH in its vision to be a healthcare provider of choice by partnering with patients, families, and care providers to transform the delivery of healthcare.

Here, providing public education programs played a major key to achieving this goal. It helped in establishing meaningful community relationships that promote overall wellness. BMH-UC’s emergency medicine medical director (Dr. Robert Pitcock) and hospital medicine medical director (Dr.Tim Thompson) recognized a growing need to educate the community about stroke symptoms and prevention. Collaboratively they developed a stroke education seminar and presented to a group of 118 attendees of a public meeting.

The results of what TeamHealth provided were marvelous! Apart from improving healthcare within the community, TeamHealth’s physician’s unified approach helped the hospital’s image as well. The presentation was well received as the attendees were delighted to see two physicians from different specialties presenting together on a crucial healthcare topic.

Presentation attendees provided outstanding feedback to BMH-UC regarding their appreciation for the presentation. BMH-UH appreciated the department leaders’ dedication to community outreach. Through the stroke education seminar, Dr. Pitcock and Thompson hoped to encourage potential stroke victims in their community to react quickly to symptoms and seek immediate treatment in order to see the best possible patient outcome.

Meet the Trailblazer

Leif M. Murphy is the chief executive officer and president of TeamHealth. As a proven leader with more than 20 years of experience in healthcare operations, business development and finance, Leif cultivates and leads an organization focused on impacting the delivery of care. Leif joined TeamHealth as president and chief executive officer in September 2016 and is also a member of the TeamHealth Board of Directors.

Throughout his career, Leif has held numerous executive-level positions in healthcare, business development and finance, including executive vice president and chief financial officer for LifePoint Health, president and chief executive officer for DSI Renal, Inc., and senior vice president and treasurer of CVS/Caremark, Inc. He also previously held leadership positions at Renal Care Group, Inc., National Nephrology Associates, Inc., and HealthSouth Corporation. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Furman University and a master’s degree in business administration from The College of William and Mary.

“We create environments where physicians can practice at their best, with an equal focus on client service, cost effectiveness, and of course, exceptional quality of care - and it shows!”

“We care about improving healthcare, not only for our own patients, but across the country.”

“At TeamHealth, we are committed to providing the best place for patients to receive care, physicians to practice medicine, and our associates to work.”

“It’s our belief that when our clinicians feel cared for, they’re better equipped to care for your patients.”