|  Bernard Steyer, MD | | Mills-Peninsula Medical Group (MPMG) has gone through a major transition this year. The reason for this change relates to the findings of a primary care task force composed of our local healthcare leaders and many MPMG physicians that evaluated the looming shortage of primary care physicians in our community. Because most young primary care physicians prefer to join an established integrated group like the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) rather than start an independent medical practice they concluded that the organizational structure of MPMG was no longer optimal. Therefore, after much deliberation the Board of Directors approved the sale of most of our assets to PAMF for the purpose of forming a new medical network. Peninsula Medical Clinics (PMC) was formed as a Mills-Peninsula division of PAMF. Some MPMG physicians joined this new group while the majority has remained in MPMG. This new network comprised of the doctors who joined PMC and all of the rest of the MPMG doctors is called the Mills-Peninsula Physician Network or simply "The Network" and all of the medical care provided to our HMO patients will be through this network. From a patient's point of view this reorganization should result in no change whatsoever in their primary care and specialist physicians regardless of whether they have remained in MPMG or joined PMC. As part of this agreement MPMG’s HMO contracts are being transitioned to PAMF, which has been a greater challenge than we anticipated, but ultimately we expect a successful outcome. Our new medical network seeks to combine the best of both worlds i.e. the highly integrated foundation model provided by PAMF with the physicians of MPMG. Our common purpose is to provide the best health care possible to all of our patients. To that end both the PMC physicians and most of the MPMG physicians will share the same electronic health record and the same primary care physician and specialists will be available to our patients as they had before. Patients can move freely between doctors who are in PMC and those in MPMG since they are all in the same network. Healthcare in the United States is changing and we at MPMG are looking toward the future and trying to adapt in ways that will allow us to continue to provide the absolute best medical care possible to our patients. We believe that an affiliation between the physicians in MPMG and a medical foundation offers our community the best possible opportunity of continuing to receive highly coordinated, efficient, integrated and most importantly the highest quality of healthcare available anywhere. The great majority of doctors in our new medical network remain within MPMG. We are a vital component to the healthcare delivery system in our community and intend to remain so for many years to come. 
Bernard Steyer, MD |
Last Reviewed: January 2011