TeamHealth is a physician practice in the U.S. founded in 1979 and based in Knoxville, Tennessee, pursuing medical outsourcing. Originally a provider of emergency department services, it is outsourcing physicians in emergency medicine, hospital medicine, anesthesiology, critical care, obstetrics, orthopedic surgery, general surgery, ambulatory care, post-acute care and medical call centers to approximately 2,900 acute and post-acute facilities nationwide. After numerous acquisitions in the 2010s it has become the largest market share in U.S. physician outsourcing. TeamHealth has affiliated partner companies, including D&Y Locum Tenens, Spectrum Healthcare Resources and AccessNurse.
History
TeamHealth was founded in Knoxville in 1979 by Dr. Lynn Massingale. The company began as Southeastern Emergency Physicians, the predecessor to TeamHealth, when Dr. Massingale, then an emergency medicine physician at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, earned the staffing contract in the emergency department at the medical center. Dr. Randal Dabbs, co-founder, began working with Southeastern Emergency Physicians and became a full partner in 1981.
In 1983, Dr. John Staley, co-founder, formed Emergency Coverage Corporation, a competitor to Southeastern Emergency Physicians. In 1986, the two companies merged. Over the years, other physicians, Dr. Gar LaSalle, Dr. James Rybak and Dr. Jim George, and their clinical groups joined TeamHealth and are now considered founders of the company.
As of 2015, TeamHealth contracted more than 18,000 health professionals and handled about 10 million emergency room visits per year.Leif M. Murphy became chief executive officer and president in 2016.
In 2017, TeamHealth’s clinician recovery team responded to several natural disasters and crisis situations, including Hurricane Harvey in Houston; Hurricane Irma in Florida; the Route 91 Harvest music festival mass shooting in Las Vegas; the Atlas Peak wildfire in northern California; and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. In each situation, TeamHealth’s clinicians helped local hospitals manage capacity as they were overcrowded with patients.
In September 2019, the NYT revealed that Team Health was one of two companies behind a political action group called "Doctor Patient Unity". The PAC had surfaced in July 2019 and spent more than $28 million in advertising opposing legislation to end out-of-network charges ("surprise medical bills" after emergency room visits). Because it did not disclose staff nor funders it has been referred to as a dark money group. In October 2019, TeamHealth CEO Leif Murphy reaffirmed the company’s long-standing policy against balance billing patients and urged Congress to pass a legislative solution to end surprise medical billing that allowed health insurers and providers to work out billing disputes through an independent dispute resolution system.
In December 2020, TeamHealth CEO Leif Murphy issued the following statement supporting the No Surprises Act, “We fully support the No Surprises Act, as it is unequivocally the right thing for patients by placing the obligation for fair payment for emergency services on the insurer and keeping the patient out of the middle of any payment dispute.”
In August 2019, Moody's downgraded TeamHealth's bond rating to B3-CFR and B3-PD probability of default citing its dispute with its largest payor source, United Healthcare. United Healthcare alleged that TeamHealth was responsible for egregious billing for services rendered in emergency rooms across the country and announced "it will terminate approximately two-thirds of its in-network contracts with Team Health between October 15, 2019 until July 1, 2020. The company also said that UnitedHealth had significantly reduced its payments to Team Health for out-of-network services."
In June 2020, a district court in Nevada ruled that a lawsuit filed by TeamHealth against United Healthcare could proceed. TeamHealth alleged that United breached its contracts by underpaying claims and worked with Data ISight to artificially reduce payment rates.
In August 2019, a Qui Tam lawsuit was filed on behalf of the US Government alleging systemic billing fraud involving Federal and State payor systems. Following a two-year investigation, the government declined to intervene in the case. The suit was settled and TeamHealth made no admission of wrongdoing.