HeartCare Midwest is central Illinois' largest cardiology practice consisting of nineteen physicians and more than two hundred nurses, medical technicians, and administrative staff in more than twelve counties throughout the state. Founded in 1994, HeartCare Midwest is the product of a corporate merger between the well-established practices of Cardiovascular Medicine and Illinois Heart Institute. Having more than two hundred years of experience between them, HeartCare Midwest physicians' hold medical and advanced cardiology degrees from such impressive universities as Duke, Harvard, Princeton and the University of California at Los Angles. HeartCare Midwest's affiliations with major medical centers in the area like Saint Francis, …show more content…

Although direct competition from individual cardiology practices in the area is no real threat, the presence of multi-specialty groups, like what HeartCare's is planning to become, in large metropolitan areas continues to draw patients from rural-type communities like Peoria to their larger clinics. Beyond that, insurance companies will often look at a metropolitan-based community over a rural town purely on the assumption the larger community has better resources. In addition to location, insurance companies also look at where care is administered. Despite the rumors, physicians are not the ones making all the money. When a procedure is performed, charges are generated for both HeartCare and the medical facility where the procedure was completed. Unfortunately, the insurance companies treat both the charges from the medical facility and those from HeartCare as one in the same when they analyze pricing trends in geographic locations.
Another consideration is the future direction of health care administration. Health care is changing dramatically from individual-based medical treatments to group-based treatments called managed-care administration. Specifically, managed care contracts will force HeartCare to fix a price for their services and commit to where those services are performed in advance. The concept behind managed care is to restrict the variables in medical care thereby reducing unforeseen costs to