Pros
They *try* (don't always succeed but try) to keep patient load to about 20 patients per physician, which may be lower than other groups. However, this is self-serving in the end as they know that any more patients, and physicians will have difficulty discharging them and that's Sound's primary goal.
Cons
PHYSICIANS! BEWARE!!! I worked for Sound Physicians as a locums in a few of their hospitals through Echo for more than two years and have seen concerning trends in all hospitals where I worked which you should carefully consider before pursuing a job with them. They may say wonderful things about their vision and the services they provide etc. But bottom line is they care about money and not patient care (now of course there are people and physicians within the organization who do care about patients but remember there's a huge corporation behind any facade of 'high-value good patient care' and this corporation cares most about the bottom line and in the end you will feel these pressures driving 'production' ). One 'red flag' I suggest you consider with these 'provider' management groups is the type of physicians they hire--Sound tends to recruit and hire two groups of physicians- those newly graduated who haven't been taught in medical school that it shouldn't be considered normal to have someone else micromanage not just your medical decisions but more importantly (to Sound) how much money you're costing the hospital (they will eventually show you your 'data' and how poorly you compare to whatever is expected)/how long your patients are staying in the hospital/how high you're billing for the services you provide (the higher the better since Sound is making money off of you--and do know they have been sued by government agencies for overbilling as this is what they encourage you to do--obviously they don't tell you to outright overbill, but they make it abundantly clear that they think you should billing for the highest level of care on the vast, vast majority of patients). [As a side note, I don't think you should keep patients in hospital longer than necessary both for their benefit and the hospital's bottom line, nor do I think you should order unnecessary tests, but there's a true push from Sound to get patients out the door as quickly as humanly feasible, which is stressful for the physician and often bad for patients]. Another group of physicians they tend to hire is those with visa issues--nothing wrong with these physicians but this group is often 'stuck' and so will take almost any job. If you choose to go forward and interview with them for a position, be sure to ask to talk with any senior physicians (if there are any) and those who might have visa problems--and get the real story, without admin staff around, perhaps by phone or e-mail. If you're still interested in working for them, I say go through Echo (Sound's locums agency) and become a locums first. That way you can see how things work first hand, and if you're still interested you can sign on (and they will ask you to sign on unless you just do a horrific job).
