About PCCMG

 What Modern Healthcare said about PCCMG
Primary Critical Care was incorporated in 1995 out of a network of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Internal Medicine, and Emergency Medicine physicians. In a short period of time PCCMG has credentialed a large number of physicians who together represent coverage for almost 20% of the acute care facilities in California. The physician membership in Primary Critical Care comes from 12 counties including San Francisco, Alameda, Sonoma, Kern, Fresno, Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Diego.

Primary Critical Care services are available to payers, hospitals, medical groups, and other IPAs as a vehicle for controlling the costs and outcomes of patients who require hospitalization. PCCMG physicians are board certified or board eligible in at least one specialty of medicine and frequently have additional certification and/or experience in the specialty of Critical Care Medicine.In highly managed markets, organizations are beginning to look at cost outliers such as out of area admissions in order to further control expenses.

Until recently there has not been a clearly defined inpatient care specialist. Primary care physicians have gained tremendous credibility for their specialty in the era of healthcare reform by spearheading the process of managing care for the relatively healthy commercially aged portion of the population. However, once a patient is admitted to the hospital, business as usual often prevails, even today in highly managed markets. This means that the patient's attending physician often relies on multiple subspecialists to provide consultative expertise. This "team approach" often results in a confusing situation for the patient, family, and other caregivers because no one doctor consistently functions as the leader for decisions that involve complex clinical, financial, and ethical issues. The Hospitalist movement, first described in a New England Journal of Medicine editorial in August of 1996, is helping to clarify the importance of establishing a unique inpatient admitting program.

The increasing senior enrollment in to Medicare-risk plans will provide Primary Critical Care physicians with the opportunity to serve as the inpatient specialist for the sickest and most expensive patients in the system. Success in controlling costs and providing excellent clinical outcomes is due to our ability to provide the following:

  • Talented physicians who function as hi-tech PCPs for patients who are at the highest risk for resource consumption
  • Literature-based practice guidelines to standardize as much as possible the process of caring for acute and critical ill patients
  • Legitimate 24-hour, seven day coverage to hospitals and ICUs that have traditionally had to rely primarily on telephone contact with consulting specialists for patient management during significant portions of each day.

Our 24-hour call center, "PCC:OnCall," works to link our physicians with payers, hospital ERs, ICUs, and medical-surgical floors.
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