Salem, Mass. – More than 15 established medical practices affiliated with North Shore Medical Center, that represent nearly 200 physicians and other health experts, have joined together under a single name-- North Shore Physicians Group. The new name more clearly communicates the full depth and breadth of the group and will be easier for patients to understand and access.
While practice names will change, many elements will not. Office locations, doctors and staff, and phone numbers will stay the same, but continuity of care and communication among the practices will be enhanced.
Members of North Shore Physicians Group also share a single electronic medical record system, which ensures that patient medical information is always up to date. The group also has a central registration system so all of its doctors have the same information about a patient at any given time. For example – if a patient changes his or her address with one doctor, it changes with all of them.
“We’ve had a lot of these services in place for quite some time, but because of all the different names, our patients couldn’t plainly see all of the resources we had to offer,” said Sharon Lucie, Director of Operation for North Shore Physicians Group. “Our hope is that by providing more consistency within our organization, we will make things easier and more convenient for our patients.”
North Shore Physicians Group is an affiliate of North Shore Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital. With practices in Beverly, Danvers, Lynn, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem, Saugus and Swampscott, finding a doctor on the North Shore is easy. Its practices include:
- Harbor Medical Group
- North Shore Family Medicine
- North Shore Medical Group
- North Shore Neurosurgery and Spine
- OB/GYN Associates of the North Shore
- Peabody Medical Group
- Puritan Medical Group
- Salem Women’s Health
Physicians and other health experts of these practices provide services in expertise in:
Formerly affiliated through NSMC’s Charter Professional Services Corporation, each practice had its own name which led to considerable confusion among patients and physicians. In addition, the multitude of names failed to convey the systemwide features of the group such as electronic medical records and central registration.
“Health care can be very complicated,” says Lucie. “Changing our practice names is one way we can make it simpler for our patients and our physicians.”
North Shore Physicians Group will also have practices inside the new Mass General/North Shore Center for Outpatient Care in Danvers when it opens in the spring of 2009.
