Call a doctor for hospital HMOs.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: Hospital HMOs not doing well - Brief Article

When Tar Heel hospitals launched health-maintenance organizations six years ago, they promised to show big insurers how to do managed care. Now, the show is over. Four have flopped, one is struggling, and the only star, Winston-Salem-based Partners National Health Plans Inc., is being sold to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. The $202 million deal will give the Chapel Hill insurer the state's biggest HMO by far. And it'll likely hasten Blue Cross' long-expected conversion from nonprofit to for-profit status.

Bob Greczyn, president and chief executive of Blue Cross, gloats a little when asked what went awry for the other hospital-run HMOs. "When you're in the insurance business, you have to make a lot of difficult decisions. Hospitals have trouble making them." Such as balancing demands for higher pay from doctors and nurses on the hospital side, with the lower costs and increased productivity insurers want.

Six Tar Heel hospital systems created HMOs -- Duke University Health Systems in Durham, UNC Health Care in Chapel Hill, Carolinas HealthCare System in Charlotte, University Health System of Eastern Carolina in Greenville and Novant Health System and North Carolina Baptist Hospitals, both in Winston-Salem. Four have sold or shuttered their HMOs...