The Palo Alto Medical Foundation and the Mills-Peninsula Medical Group are forming a new multispecialty physician group and physician network in San Mateo County, Calif. The new group, called the Peninsula Medical Clinic, will contract with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, an affiliate of Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health, to provide physician services to residents in the county south of San Francisco, in conjunction with a network of 350 independent physicians who are members of the Mills-Peninsula Medical Group. The new group will initially be composed of 40 family and internal medicine physicians, pediatricians and cardiologists. The Peninsula Medical Clinic will launch April 1, 2010, and was approved by Mills-Peninsula Medical Group shareholders in voting that ended Dec. 9. The Peninsula Medical Clinic will work closely with the Palo Alto Foundation Medical Group, formed by the merger of three medical groups in January 2008, and composed of more than 900 physicians in the greater Bay Area. In fall 2010, some Peninsula Medical Group physician offices will relocate to a new building under construction near the Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame, Calif. Physician recruitment, adoption of uniform electronic health records and better infrastructure in a patient-centered care model are the goals, officials said. “Our primary-care physicians are aging just as the population is aging, and it has been difficult to recruit new primary-care physicians to the community,” said Brian Roach, M.D., president of the Mills-Peninsula Medical Group, in a written statement. Roach added that the new group aims to attract more than 200 physicians over the next decade.
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