CHARLOTTE — Novant Health announced that it is rebranding its ChoiceHealth operations as AXIA Physician Solutions. With the rebranding comes an expanded portfolio of robust services that will better help independent physician groups with resources and required infrastructure, which are necessary to successfully meet the challenges of health care reform.

Novant Health has provided support to independent physicians through a membership program called ChoiceHealth, which helped physicians with managed care contracting, credentialing, strategic sourcing and other services. ChoiceHealth currently serves over 2,200 providers and will still be offered under the umbrella of AXIA Physician Solutions.

AXIA Physician Solutions will offer four key areas of support:

• Revenue cycle services
• Operations optimization
• Clinical and quality management solutions
• Virtual practice administrator

As the health care landscape continues to evolve, physicians find themselves navigating an increasingly complex environment — an environment that is making it harder for some independent physician practices to succeed.

For example, over the past four years, Medicare and other payors offered incentive-based opportunities to physicians willing to invest in compliant electronic health record systems. Now many new programs will eventually penalize those physicians who did not make the initial transition and will ultimately leave them defined as high-cost/low-quality providers. Penalties that can come over the next four years include those from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) meaningful use (MU) program, the CMS Value-Based Payment Modifier (VBM) Program, Physicians Quality Reporting System (PQRS) and Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS).

But at the same time, the new landscape offers opportunity.

Many commercial payors are offering pay-for-performance incentive opportunities to physicians who can demonstrate high quality patient care. Meeting these new criteria takes time, energy and expense that many small offices do not have. By updating its current offerings, AXIA Physician Solutions will be better positioned to leverage technology and experience on behalf of its customers.

“Novant Health recognizes the toll health care reform is taking on independent physician groups, and AXIA Physician Solutions is an alternative model designed to support those physicians who value their independence and autonomy, not as only physicians but proud business owners,” said Patrick Easterling, senior vice president at Novant Health. “The manner in which Novant Health partners with physicians in the future will be less relevant as more partnership models unveil themselves. The objective and purpose are to provide a variety of options that best fit a physician’s needs.”

AXIA is the Greek word for “value” – a name chosen to underscore the value this new solution will bring to physicians and their patients.