DuPage Medical Group, the largest independent physician group in the Chicago area, is continuing its rapid expansion by entering the northwest suburbs.
The group said today it intends to buy Northwest Health Care Associates, a 25-physician group with locations in Hoffman Estates, East Dundee and Elk Grove Village. Northwest Health Care covers seven medical specialties, with a strong emphasis on primary care. The purchase price was not disclosed.
With nearly 620 doctors and $741 million in 2016 revenue, Downers Grove-based DuPage Medical has long been a western suburban health care powerhouse. More recently, it has grown in the southern and southwestern suburbs, expanding into Will County in 2015 through the acquisition of Meridian Medical Associates and its partner, Midwest Hospitalists, which brought in more than 40 physicians in 12 specialties. Last year it also scooped up Pronger Smith MedicalCare, a private practice with more than 60 doctors across 20 departments in the southwest suburbs.
"We're growing in the south and southwest suburbs and now we're moving up to the north," DuPage CEO Mike Kasper said in an interview. "We see this as a platform opportunity in a new market."
Kasper said Northwest Health Care's primary care focus, with additional strength in gastroenterology, complements DuPage Medical's areas of expertise in other Chicagoland regions.
He said the union was sparked by a longstanding relationship between Dr. Brian Muska, a gastroenterologist and Northwest Health Care leader, and Dr. David Dungan, who practices both internal medicine and pediatrics and sits on DuPage Medical's board of directors. The two trained together during residencies at Loyola University in the late 1980s.
"This relationship will allow us to continue serving patients in our communities, while providing resources as well as access to leading-edge technology needed to withstand the changing healthcare landscape," Muska said in a statement.
In the future, Kasper said, DuPage Medical will look to build out general surgery, oncology and orthopedic surgery specialties in the northwest suburbs, and will try to grow relationships with hospitals there, including Amita Health and Northwest Community Hospital.
DuPage Medical, founded in 1999, seeks to offer an alternative to doctors who don't want to sell their private practices to large hospital-focused health care systems such as Advocate Health Care, Northwestern Memorial HealthCare and NorthShore University HealthSystem. Like DuPage Medical, those groups have gotten bigger and bigger as the trend of medical practice consolidation has continued.
DuPage Medical received a big boost a year and a half ago, when Boston-based private equity firm Summit Partners invested $250 million. That infusion helped support the group's south suburban growth and enabled technology improvements that have brought all 600-plus doctors under one electronic medical records system.
"Independent and hungry, DuPage Medical Group pushes into northwest suburbs" originally appeared in Crain's Chicago Business.