Single specialty renaissance: the promise of disease management.

The conventional wisdom that all single-specialty providers outside of primary care will lose their ability to be significant contributors in the managed care marketplace is now being questioned. Subspecialty groups and single-specialty practices have the opportunity to reinventing themselves and offer their services with a disease management strategy. While groups have the opportunity to challenge the stasus quo, they must develop new ways of providing the services for which they are best qualified. The structures that can be utilized to implement this include group practice mergers, carve-out managed care networks, development of hospital relationships and fostering a relationship with a physician practice management company that focuses on their area of health care.