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Extended Care Physicians, P.A.
Extended Care Physicians provides primary medical care to older adults in Nursing Homes, Assisted Living Facilities and Retirement Communities. We also offer Geriatric Psychiatry whenever possible.
Our medical groups were formed by Physicians who really enjoy working in Long Term Care and Retirement Community settings. Each came from established office based practices with a Long Term Care component. Their experiences created an understanding of the need for systems to improve medical care for Long Term and Residential based patients. Building better systems of care is ECP's primary purpose.
ECP Physicians demonstrate their commitment to improving long term care by their active participation in the American Medical Directors Association (AMDA), and the Long Term Care Vision Group. All primary care physicians participate in AMDA Certified Medical Director training; eleven physicians hold the CMD certificate. All the physicians on our staff are Board Certified or Eligible in their Specialty. Areas of specialty include Family Practice, Internal Medicine, Geriatrics, Palliative Medicine, Emergency Medicine, and Psychiatry. Our staff also includes, Physician Assistants, Geriatric, Adult, and Family Nurse Practitioners working in collaboration with our Physicians.
We currently have three practices:
- ECP-Mountains - Located in Asheville and serving Buncombe, Clay, Cleveland, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Rutherford, Transylvania and Yancey counties.
- ECP-Piedmont - Located in Hickory and serving Alexander, Burke, Caldwell, Catawba, Cleveland, Davie, Gaston and Wilkes counties.
- ECP-Coastal - Located in Wilmington and serving Beaufort, Bladen, Craven, Jones, New Hanover, Onslow, Robeson and Sampson counties.
Our business office is located in Asheville, NC.
CMS Proposition to share
Everyone loves a witch hunt. Are you a witch?
CMS recently announced in a draft policy, that they plan to open their total claims payment database to ‘qualified’ entities. This will allow specific Quality Related evaluations of individual Part B provider ( MD/NP/ PT/ etc) behavior. The data shared specifically excludes any clinical data (data not included in the claims data). This is really a scheme to unleash the world of investigative reporting on clinicians. As a point of reference, the Wall Street Journal ran a series of articles on physicians who had the highest frequency of claims based on their accessing (somewhat improperly, if not illegally) a ‘de-identified’ billing database that was then married with a provider roster. This led to the naming of individuals who had a pattern of ‘abusive’ billing and treatment. There were lots of problems with this scheme – first only Medicare data was reviewed, but the analysis lacked the totality of provider claims (private insurance and self pay), second – there was no correction for acuity. Read more: CMS Proposition to share
Rhode Island Doctor fined for social marketing
Google this name - Alexandra Thran. She is a Rhode Island E/R MD. She was just fined $500 by the state’s Medical Board for posting information about patients on her Facebook page. 
While the patients weren’t identified, the Board believed there was enough data about a specific individual’s injuries to allow subsequent identification. The MD also lost her privileges at that hospital (e.g. she was terminated).
We live in a world that is immensely curious about anything ‘unusual’; we also live in a world that is extremely unforgiving once it decides someone crossed an arbitrary line. Nearly every clinician I know shares anecdotal information about patients that might be construed as a HIPPA violation. What might be overlooked when done in a private conversation, can come back to haunt you if it ever gets on to the Internet.
Please be extremely cognizant of the possible unintended consequences of social media postings about your work.
Nursing Homes Vital to ACO Success?
The National Accountable Care Summit, held recently in Washington, D.C., provided a perfect platform from which the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) proclaimed their advocacy for accountable care organizations (ACOs).
AHCA/NCAL President and CEO Mark Parkinson, a strong supporter of including nursing homes in ACOs, and a featured speaker at the summit, described skilled nursing facilities and ACOs as "perfect partners," according to a recent McKnight's Long Term Care News report. His statement seems to make sense. Nursing homes play a major role in their ability to keep their patients' hospital readmissions down - most likely a key factor in the as-yet-undefined accountable care regulations.
But does his statement resonate with those that work in the trenches, so to speak? Do long-term care providers and vendors see the value nursing homes bring to ACOs in the same way that Parkinson does? As with any hot topic in healthcare, it depends whom you ask.
Read more: Nursing Homes Vital to ACO Success?