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Blue Cross of Idaho owns minority stake in Primary Health Medical Group

Posted at 5:10 PM, Apr 05, 2019
and last updated 2019-04-05 19:10:58-04

BOISE — Blue Cross of Idaho is now a partial owner of Primary Health Medical Group. The purchase will help expand locations and add more primary health care physicians, a population of medical professionals for which Idaho continually ranks on the bottom end of the scale.

"Primary health wanted to expand the number of locations they have in the treasure valley, and in part of that, they'd expand the number of primary care physicians in the valley, so that's why we wanted to support them as they did that," said senior VP of healthcare economics for Blue Cross of Idaho Drew Hobby.

As far as how this changes for the patient, he says you probably won't even notice.

"No impact to co-pays, no impact to any insurance products that we have today," said Hobby.

Primary Health Medical Group will continue to accept other insurers, and Blue Cross of Idaho will still work with other providers, and primary health group will still have control of all the day to day operations.

Maybe you're wondering if this is something that happens often? So far, not in our area, but Blue Cross of Idaho plans to see how this investment goes and if they can expand further.

"They have a proven track record; they've been in the valley for 25 years," said Hobby, "they provide rapid access to really high quality and efficient care, and so we work with them today and when they were looking to expand we thought that was a great opportunity for us to invest in them."