About Heywood PHO
The Heywood Physician Hospital Organization, Inc. (the Heywood PHO) was organized in 1992 as an entity which had as its primary mission the negotiation of risk based managed care contracts. At that time, the medical staff of Heywood Hospital did not have an organized structure for managed care contracting, and several prominent managed care plans had medical group contracting as a prerequisite for contracting with the physicians.
Much has changed since the early 1990’s. Risk based contracting has almost completely disappeared and has been replaced with quality of care incentive programs. Today, the Heywood PHO remains the primary vehicle for managed care contracting for the Heywood Hospital medical staff, but there is also a strong focus on quality of care and efficiency of services, including pay for performance incentive programs.
Members of the Heywood PHO support and promote preventive care services, early intervention for those patients who have new onset illnesses, and good coordination of care between primary care and specialists, as well as with the hospital. Many of the Heywood PHO’s efforts are directed at improving patient education, assuring that patients receive the preventive services which they need, arranging for needed medical care, and also working with its membership to provide that care in the most appropriate setting.
Although the Heywood PHO is a private, stand alone, not for profit organization, it works very closely with Heywood Hospital, which is currently the sole corporate member of the Heywood PHO. There are currently over 100 physician members in the Heywood PHO. Most physicians have Heywood Hospital as their primary hospital affiliation, but we also have a number of physicians whose primary affiliation is with Worcester based tertiary care centers or other community hospitals.
The collegial working relationship among the large number of primary care physicians and our specialists, as well as the excellent working relationship with Heywood Hospital, allows the Heywood PHO to maintain a community of individuals dedicated to providing medical care to residents in Gardner and the surrounding communities. We work to provide medical care locally as much as possible because we espouse a community based medical model philosophy which provides good medical care efficiently and at a low cost. However, we also refer patients as appropriate to other facilities and specialists when needed care is not available in our community.
If you would like to learn more about the Heywood PHO, please call 978-630-6538 or send your questions or comments to kaval.r@heywood.org.
