UCSF Health and John Muir Health have dramatically expanded — and renamed — their year-old Bay Area accountable care network, adding seven new hospitals and three new medical groups to the enterprise.
The hope is that the network will be competitive with giants like Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health. The network’s new brand name — Canopy Health — is intended to reach out to the broad Bay Area community, network CEO Joel Criste told the Business Times Wednesday.
“We’re off and running,” UCSF Health CEO Mark Laret added, in a Wednesday afternoon interview. Laret called Canopy Health’s recent growth spurt “the beginning of something that could be very big,” potentially a model for hospitals and medical groups nationally to use as a template, and a strong, multi-hospital and medical group alternative to Kaiser Permanente, in particular.
Hill Physicians Medical Group, one of Northern California’s largest independent practice associations, the East Bay’s Muir Medical Group IPA and the North Bay’s Meritage Medical Network have quietly joined in recent months, as shareholders and participating providers in the venture, officials told the Business Times.
The two founding organizations still hold the largest stakes and are clearly running the show, however.
The new additions give the network more than 4,000 affiliated doctors in the Bay Area, which in turn gives more clout when competing with regional rivals like Kaiser and Sutter.
“It’s an important step that allows them to position themselves as a system to compete with Kaiser, Sutter and Stanford Health Care,” among others, said Walter Kopp, a longtime Bay Area hospital and medical group consultant.
HENRY KOTULA 