Another Emergency Medicine Personnel Company Bankrupted

NES Health, the personnel recruitment company that has attracted attention recently He doesn’t pay his doctorssays it will “cease its operations and cease doing business,” according to one report company email shared on social media.

Doctors who work for the company may face several months’ pay cuts, and NES said it would also not cover malpractice, according to the email.

The company’s CEO and chief medical officer resigned earlier this month; however, the company has not yet filed for bankruptcy.

“It’s unlikely they’ll go bankrupt until they collect the next few months’ patient care bills,” said co-founder and CEO Leon Adelman, MD. Ivy CliniciansThe emergency medicine jobs marketplace, which tracks issues at NES Health, said: MedPage Today. “Meanwhile, the revenues will be protected from bankruptcy, and doctors will get nothing.”

NES Health is the third physician staffing firm to close in recent years. in 2023 American Physician Partners (APP) and Imagine Healthcare Both went bankrupt.

NES Health appears to be run by a single physician, although both companies have significant involvement from private equity. Allan Rappaport, MD, J.D.said Adelman.

“NES is not a private equity story,” Adelman said. MedPage Today. “This (someone) probably got himself into debt and then tries to get out of it by not paying the doctors.”

NES did not return a request for comment MedPage Today.

Some hospitals terminated their contracts with NES Health and hired new companies to manage their emergency departments (EDs). These changes Followed by Ivy Clinicians.

Seton Medical Center in Daly City, California, moved its contracts to Vituity, a physician-owned and operated group in which all physicians are considered owners. Even though it’s a large company with 246 emergency rooms under management in the U.S., “it’s like a traditional medical practice on a large scale,” Adelman said.

“They all have visibility into the finances of their sites and districts,” he said. “Their board of directors consists of physicians who practice clinically at Vituity.”

Seton Medical Center spokesman Pete Hillan said the hospital continues to pay NES Health even though NES no longer pays doctors.

“Where did the money Seton paid to NES to pay doctors go?” he said in a phone interview.

Hillan emphasized that the emergency department at the facility remained open and functional despite severing ties with NES and negotiating with Vituity and hiring local doctors to cover shifts.

“We are appalled by NES’s actions and are taking legal action because NES left Seton in a difficult situation and Seton paid funds meant for NES’s emergency physicians but NES failed to make those payments,” said Sarkis Vartanian, director of Seton Medical Center. he said in a statement provided by Hillan.

Three hospitals in Pennsylvania, including Roxborough Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia, have signed new contracts with Small Hospital Innovations (SHI). privately owned and physician-ledhowever, additional details about this are not publicly available. There are 11 EDs under management, According to Ivy Clinicians.

Emergency physician Frederick Poage, DO, who works in two separate emergency rooms at the Northwest Texas Health System in Amarillo, Texas, said doctors and other clinicians at those facilities are quitting because they are not getting paid.

They were told that they would be paid on November 20 for the work they did in October, but when they did not pay, they walked away and I haven’t returned to work yethe said. Although Northwest signed a new contract with a new provider, the issue is the amount of reimbursement Poage and others will receive.

Clinicians at freestanding emergency departments were offered 57 percent of the money they were owed for October work, while clinicians at the main hospital were offered 100 percent of their salaries, Poage said.

He said the hospital “chose to keep freestanding emergency rooms closed rather than treat physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants fairly. They’re the ones who live here and have been connected to Northwest for years.”

“We want to be treated the same as other people in our group,” he said. “We want to work with the new hospital group and get back to what matters – treating patients.”

Northwest did not return a request for comment. MedPage Today As of press time.

Adelman noted that NES Health “appears to be following the APP model” of “keeping operations going for as long as possible and then shutting down operations.”

Since the billing cycle typically lasts 6 or 7 weeks, declaring bankruptcy before then means “all those collections go to creditors,” he said. “When you declare bankruptcy, income is no longer under your control.”