David Ford, CEO of CMA Physician Services (CMA PSO), was recently featured on the Thriving Practice podcast  to discuss MedWay – a new administrative solution supporting independent physician practices. The episode, "Independent Practice Isn't Dead: How Physicians Can Thrive Outside Big Healthcare," delved into how MedWay can help reshape the administrative landscape for independent practices across California.

In the episode, Ford  discussed the mounting challenges faced by independent physicians—from staffing and compliance burdens to burnout—and how MedWay, CMA PSO’s newest initiative, aims to address them.

“Independent physician practices, they're really small businesses, and they have a lot of sort of quintessential small business problems: that staffing is hard, it's hard to get benefits, it's hard to get a good retirement plan for yourself, for your staff,” Ford explained. “And after hearing this story over and over and over again, my team really thought, ‘Well, this feels like something we might be able to solve for’ and thus was born an idea … called MedWay, and it's an offering for independent physicians to basically outsource a lot of those headaches – payroll, benefits, retirement, timekeeping, compliance – without having to join a larger entity.”

MedWay is a comprehensive administrative support solution developed by CMA PSO that enables independent practices to streamline essential back-office functions. By offering services like payroll processing, benefits administration, retirement plan management, compliance support, and timekeeping, MedWay helps practices run more efficiently, without sacrificing autonomy.

“We hope that [MedWay] gives physicians more time to have dinner with their children, leave the office at a reasonable hour,” said Ford. “[Physician burnout] is such a huge problem in medicine right now, and we think this is a component of it, too … these physicians are trying to do something that maybe they didn't spend as much time learning to do: ‘How do you run a practice? How do you run this small business? … How do you comply with all the laws, especially in a highly, highly regulated state like California where we have very strict laws?’ And so that's really where we're coming from with Medway.”

MedWay’s launch comes at a critical time, as independent physicians continue to face mounting pressure to consolidate with larger health systems in order to stay afloat. With MedWay, CMA PSO aims to preserve the viability and independence of small practices by allowing doctors to focus on what matters most: caring for patients.

To learn more about MedWay and how it can assist your practice, visit MedWayDocs.com. listen to the full Thriving Practice episode here or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.