Tryon Medical Partner’s CEO Dr. Dale Owen was interviewed by Michelle Crouch for an article that appeared in The Charlotte Ledger and the NC Health News website Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024.
In the article, Dr. Owen shares that TPG Healthcare Partners, a division of TPG Inc., has made an investment in Tryon Management Group, the organization that offers the back office support that powers Tryon Medical Partners’ clinical care teams.
To read the entire article, you may need to subscribe to The Charlotte Ledger. If you are unable to, here are a few highlights from the article:
- Six years after breaking away from Atrium Health to build Charlotte’s largest independent physician practice, the doctors at Tryon Medical Partners are teaming up with a private equity firm in a move (that) will help them grow.
- “The amount of interest in our organization from patients is just off the charts,” said Dr. Owen, a cardiologist who is one of the founders of the practice. “To meet that kind of demand, which we are excited about doing, requires financial investment.”
- Owen described TPG as an innovative, top-notch investor with “deep-seated experience in health care services that will enable us to provide even better levels of care to our patients.”
- “Patients should see absolutely no change whatsoever in any kind of day-to-day operations at all,” he (Owen) said.
- Owen said TPG will improve the business through operational efficiencies, better care coordination and taking advantage of new payment models and direct partnerships with employers.
- Owen said the clinical side of the practice, Tryon Medical Partners, will continue to be “100 percent physician-owned and -operated.”
- Several experts told The Ledger/NC Health News that having two organizations — one for the clinical side and the other for the business side — is the typical arrangement when a private equity firm invests in a physician practice. Why? Because most states, including North Carolina, have laws that prohibit corporations from practicing medicine.
- Matthew Hanis, a Charlotte-based consultant and expert in the business of healthcare, said medical practices need capital for technology, for equipment and to finance acquisitions if they want to expand. Even to recruit a physician is a costly enterprise, he said.