AR Gould to Partner with TeamHealth for E.D. Care

Northern Light AR Gould Hospital will partner with TeamHealth to provide emergency medical services in the hospital’s Emergency Department beginning October 1.

TeamHealth, a leading physician services organization, assists hospitals nationally in 48 states with healthcare professional staffing.  The Northern Light Health system began partnering with the company a year ago to provide emergency and hospital medicine services at several hospitals within the system.

AR Gould President Greg LaFrancois said the decision was not made in haste, but added it is the best choice for the hospital and for the community. “Just like at many rural hospitals, it has been challenging to recruit permanent providers to our busy ED, requiring us to rely on ‘locum tenens’ or temporary providers to meet our needs.  Working with TeamHealth, which has a proven track record in recruiting high quality, board certified providers, will benefit our patients,”

Most of the hospital’s regular ED providers, have been hired by TeamHealth, so there will still be many familiar faces when patients go to the ED for care.

To help alleviate stress, there are some quick points that the hospital wants community members to know:

• Patients will begin getting two bills for an emergency room visit, one from TeamHealth for the clinician who provided the care and another from the hospital for all other aspects of the ED visit. This does not reflect any additional charges; these services have always been billed to patients but previously were grouped on one bill from the hospital.

• Regarding insurance, TeamHealth’s policy is to be in-network, and they are in-network for 90 percent of patient visits across the country.

• TeamHealth does not balance bill, and the hospital’s contract specifically prohibits it. Balance billing is when someone is billed for the difference between an actual charge and the insurance amount paid.  Patients will not experience balance billing.