PACT & Hartford Healthcare: Quality Healthcare In a Private Practice Setting
What is PACT-Hartford HealthCare?
Not very long ago, healthcare was all about taking care of people. Private practices were the usual setting for seeing a doctor. And generally speaking, those doctors emphasized quality of care and putting their patients’ needs first.
Things have changed. In many cases, “health centers” have turned into “profit centers.” Rising costs of doing business have made private practices much less common. What used to be a very personal, honest and lasting connection between physicians and their patients has too often become standardized, distant and “corporate.”
PACT-Hartford HealthCare is a multi-specialty group of private practices that have banded together to maintain a private-practice style of healthcare services in the New Haven area. By becoming divisions of PACT-Hartford HealthCare, these practices retain and protect their individual cultures and community connections while using shared resources to handle non-medical issues such as billing and technology support.
What PACT-Hartford HealthCare means to patients
For new patients, this means that when you choose to see a PACT-Hartford HealthCare provider, you’re getting the experienced quality care and service of an independent practitioner group, supported by the resources of a much larger organization. And if your provider chooses to refer you to another PACT-Hartford HealthCare practitioner, they will both be using the same health records system, helping to ensure seamless quality of care. In an industry where regulations and technology are constantly changing, we believe it’s the best of both worlds.
For existing patients whose providers have joined PACT-Hartford HealthCare, nothing significant will change except non-medical efficiency improvement, a higher level of connection with other carefully chosen divisions, and your billing contact. Other than the PACT-Hartford HealthCare name on the paperwork and an eventual change to the practice name, you may not even notice a change. Everything that you’ve become used to — your provider’s location, policies, staff, care levels — will stay the same. And with fewer back-office issues to manage, your PACT-Hartford HealthCare provider will be able to focus on your medical care rather than on the distractions that come with running a small business.
Professional standards for quality of care
Before being accepted into PACT-Hartford HealthCare, private practices go through a rigorous evaluation to make sure they meet our standards for quality of care and professionalism. Our more than 50 Connecticut physician members are committed to private practice environments that emphasize patients’ needs. We are committed to excellence, innovation, safety and quality for our patients.
Health programs and services
PACT-Hartford HealthCare currently includes divisions covering multiple specialties, with a core focus on primary care providers. Our divisions are: internal medicine, general surgery, dermatology, rheumatology, nephrology (kidney care and treatment), and gastroenterology (care and treatment of the stomach, intestines and liver), including the Healthy Weight Center of Connecticut, Other divisions may be selectively added as more local private practices seek the benefits of our physician alliance.
Our partner, Hartford HealthCare, has nearly 400 locations serving 185 towns and cities. Its resources include two tertiary-level teaching hospitals, an acute-care community teaching hospital, an acute-care hospital and trauma center, three community hospitals, the state’s most extensive behavioral health network, a large multispecialty physician group, a clinical care organization, a regional home care system, an array of senior care services, and a large physical therapy and rehabilitation network. Hartford HealthCare’s unique, system-wide Institute model offers a single, high standard of care in crucial specialties at hospital and ambulatory sites across Connecticut. The institutes include: Cancer, Heart and Vascular, Ayer Neuroscience, Orthopedics, and Tallwood Urology.
A growing suite of patient services
By having these groups under the same organizational umbrella as our five specialty medical divisions, our patients benefit from better communication and coordination of care — hopefully resulting in better care and lower out-of-pocket costs.
Our partnership with Hartford Healthcare
In mid-2020, Physicians Alliance of Connecticut (PACT) entered into a partnership with Hartford HealthCare, a similar but larger organization with locations across Connecticut. Under the agreement, PACT became PACT-Hartford HealthCare and gained access to Hartford Healthcare’s extensive resources. Both Hartford HealthCare and PACT-Hartford HealthCare are committed to supporting providers in offering high-quality, value-based healthcare services in a private practice setting.