Patent ID: 7401027

Claim:
A method of collecting fees for managing and optimizing the profitability of a plurality of physicians in a healthcare practice participating in an insurance network, the method comprising the steps of: establishing a relationship between a healthcare consultation group and the healthcare practice participating in the insurance network to increase the plurality of physicians' profitability by reducing a risk of the healthcare practice not receiving a predetermined reimbursement amount for ancillary medical costs from the insurance network; funding an incentive pool; gathering data in a tangible computer medium from each of the plurality of physicians in the healthcare practice participating in the insurance network including ancillary medical costs respective to the physicians; modifying behavior of at least one of the plurality of physicians in the healthcare practice for management of the ancillary medical costs responsive to the data gathered in the tangible computer medium; determining whether the ancillary medical costs of the plurality of physicians in the healthcare practice have reached a predetermined level within a preselected period of time; paying funds from the funded incentive pool to the healthcare practice participating in the insurance network when the ancillary medical costs of the plurality of physicians in the healthcare practice have not decreased to the preselected level over the preselected period of time; and distributing predetermined percentages of savings attributed to the modifying behavior of the plurality of physicians ancillary medical cost management if the ancillary medical costs of the plurality of physicians in the healthcare practice have decreased to the preselected level over the preselected period of time.