Fifty-one Arizona medical providers currently affiliated with Peoria-based Arizona Primary Care Physicians will form a new physicians group — Summit Medical Group Arizona — under a partnership agreement with Summit Health Management of New Jersey.
The merger will expand SHM's patient-centric, value-based healthcare model into the Southwest. SHM also plans to provide the APC customized management services including administrative, clinical and financial management offerings.
Physicians say the partnership with SHM was inspired by the increasing costs of healthcare, but also its high quality of care.
"As Summit Medical Group Arizona, we will remain committed to a 'patient first' philosophy, with a focus on providing convenient local access to high quality care," Brian Riveland, MD, CEO of Glendale, Ariz.-based Thunderbird Internal Medicine and the chief physician executive of Summit Medical Group Arizona, told The Glendale Star. "It's really the escalating cost of healthcare driving all activities in the healthcare system. What we are trying to do, as physicians, is develop those efficiencies; working with like-minded physicians to drive up the quality and drive down the cost."
The transition will be complete January 1, 2018.