Dakota Ridge doctors break from Community Hospital

BOULDER – Wanting to end their affiliation with Boulder Community Hospital, three of the doctors from the Dakota Ridge practice at 2505 Fourth St. in North Boulder are moving their practice.

The three doctors – Peter Ewing, Julie Carpenter and Karin Graff – were a part of the Community Medical Service Organization (CMSO), a subsidiary of Boulder Community Hospital. The CMSO is a “management service organization” that employs individual doctors, said Rich Sheehan, director of public relations for the hospital.

The CMSO was formed in August 1994 and employed 36 physicians as of Dec. 9, including the three doctors from Dakota Ridge, Sheehan said. He said only seven doctors have left since 1994 – four moved out of the Boulder area, one lived in Denver to begin with and two have died. He said the three from Dakota Ridge were negotiating their employment contracts.

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A fourth doctor from Dakota Ridge, Paul Berger, is not leaving the CMSO and will open a holistic health center Feb. 1 across the street from the Dakota Ridge building.

A doctor who asked not to be identified said the other three doctors, who are relocating to 2995 Baseline Road, originally sold their practices to the hospital but later decided to leave the organization “when negotiations became difficult.” When the Dakota Ridge building was given to Boulder Community Hospital as a charitable remainder trust, the doctors who wanted to go independent had to move.

The three doctors who were relocating to South Boulder declined comment or could be reached for comment.

Boulder Community Hospital took title of the building March 1989, according to the Boulder County Assessor. The property has been transferred from Boulder Memorial Hospital to Porter Memorial Hospital to Community Hospital Associates, but was donated to Boulder Memorial Hospital by Dr. Richard Daarud and Gladyce Daarud. The building is worth about $1 million.

Daarud is the original founder of the Dakota Ridge practice and designer and developer of the building, which opened in 1972. Daarud, a Boulder resident, is retired.

Another doctor who asked not to be identified said the 1994 formation of the CMSO was part of a larger trend – hospitals nationwide were buying up doctor’s practices. But, she said, because of the layers of hospital bureaucracy, some doctors were losing money. “It was an unhappy marriage,” she said.

Sheehan responded that the alleged hospital bureaucracy doesn’t stop the hospital from making money.

“Doctors are people and they change employment for a variety of reasons just like other people do,” Sheehan said of physicians leaving the CMSO.