UCP Employees Celebrate Integration Into UC Health

With cookies, punch and some well-chosen words of support, University of Cincinnati Physicians employees celebrated UCP’s integration into UC Health at three sites Friday, July 29.

Thomas Boat, MD, chief executive officer of UC Physicians, dean of the College of Medicine and vice president for health affairs at UC, stopped by celebrations at the UC Health Physicians Offices in Clifton and West Chester and the UC Health-UC Physicians Business Office on Victory Parkway to thank employees for their contribution to the integration effort and offer encouragement for the future.

"I think we have a lot to celebrate,” Boat told the gathering at the Clifton office. "The changes we’ve made over the past couple of years are going to be advantageous for all of you as participants and contributors to the change, and hopefully it’s going to be better for patients—and that’s really the end game for all of us, to make this a better system for patients.”

The integration of UCP into UC Health, which was recently implemented with the approval of the boards of directors of UCP and UC Health and the UC Board of Trustees, places the faculty practice with the hospitals of UC Health into one organization under unified and shared corporate structure, governance and leadership.

While UC Physicians will continue to exist as a corporate entity, its operations and financial statements will be integrated with UC Health. Physicians and non-dually compensated employees will be leased to UC Health through an entity to be called University of Cincinnati Physicians Company, LLC (UCPC), which will be a wholly owned subsidiary of UC Health. UCP will continue to remain strongly affiliated with the College of Medicine.

A consolidated UC Health, among many benefits to providers and patients alike, will be able to better negotiate with third-party payers and help to successfully implement the Epic electronic medical record system.

"What we have put in place is a foundation to allow UCP as a faculty practice to grow and to do all the things that everybody dreams that we can do so that we can offer more and better things for patients,” Boat added. "And I really do think that everybody will look back five and 10 years from now and say, ‘Getting together with UC Health was the right thing to do.’”