Physicians Practice and St. Mary Medical Center Partner to Improve Patient Care in Long...( BALTIMORE Jan. 8 /-Physicians Practic...),Health

BALTIMORE, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire/ --Physicians Practice and St. Mary Medical Center have joined forces to help provide area physicians and their staff more time to devote to patient care. This new partnership is a unique program designed to help doctors in the Long Beach-Torrance area better handle the cumbersome and time-consuming issues of managing a busy practice. Through this new alliance, St. Mary Medical Center will use Physicians Practice's extensive resources to deliver essential practice management tools to help local physicians manage the business aspects of medicine more efficiently and effectively.

Physicians' need for practice management information is an ever-increasing one. According to Pricewaterhouse Coopers, every hour a physician spends with a patient results in 36 minutes of paperwork. Additionally, the cost of running a medical practice has increased and now consumes as much as 62 percent of the revenue (2007 Medical Group Management Association Cost Survey), while reimbursement continues to decline from year to year (2006 and 2007 Physicians Practice Fee Schedule Surveys). Furthermore, according to the 2008 Future Physicians of America Survey, nearly 70 percent of medical students do not feel adequately prepared for managing or owning a practice in the future.

Under their new partnership, St. Mary Medical Center will sponsor the distribution of "Physicians Practice(R)", America's Leading Practice Management Journal, to approximately 3,000 local doctors from multiple specialties in the greater Long Beach-Torrance area. Physicians Practice will be mailed monthly, beginning this month, and will serve to help physicians and their office staff address the numerous challenges faced by today's medical practices. The journal will also feature a section sponsored and written by St. Mary Medical Center highlighting the hospital's latest clinical offerings as well as articles of interest to physicians i
'/>"/>