Family Practice Groups these days?!?!?

I am noticing that many of the family practices today in the Ashburn/Broadlands area are getting worse as the practice groups keep getting larger to the point where they are snapped up by INOVA.

Many of them are getting poor ratings on Yelp and Google among other social media forums. The doctors are NOT the ones that are getting the "black eyes" but its rather the practice groups themselves because the practice's front offices/billing offices are typically awful/rude. Im seeing more yelp/google reviews saying the doctors are awesome but the front office and billing staff are terrible.

I'm sure that its getting more difficult to find a family practice group that is just as good as the individual doctors themselves. I am in the throes of looking for a new family practice because Im seeing Brambleton and Broadlands Practices going to hell in a basket after they were acquired by Inova. Their billing offices as well as the front office staff are less than desirable even though the doctor is awesome himself but he and his fellow physicians cannot change the front office / billing staff's attitude and problems because they no longer own the business --its now INOVA and they are a LARGE business now.

Sometimes group practices that sell out to make the big bucks suffer later on when long time customers leave but Im sure the doctors signed an exclusive contract with INOVA that ties them to the group for much longer. My own fraternity brother left a group practice that sold out to a large business because he didn't like what they had become -- souless because they sold out to big corporate interests. He joined a smaller start up group practice and loves the small flavor of it and his prior customers followed him to the smaller practice.

Sucks but its life but I can go to another smaller group practice that has better ratings / services.

 

I have been going to the same practice as you since 2009. I suspect the pandemic is taking a huge toll on the family practices. They only see sick people through video visits these days and if you are sick with covid they generally tell you rest up and stay home. They don't want to see you so they send you to the ER or hospital and hope for the best. Many of the people with chronic diseases have skipped their visits with their provider or get to do video visits. So, patient traffic is down, revenue is probably down, and overhead costs most likely went up. The INOVA business model probably fixes rates, labor costs, and has better negotiating power with the big health insurance carriers in the area.

 

It's been going on long before the RONA issue. BFP was merged with multiple other companies, but the Previa (or however you spell it) was the tipping point for the practices. Now that BFP is part of INOVA, it's really bad. I have been a patient of theirs since 2004..