A doctor has a morning full of office appointments. A patient is also in the hospital. Both need the same physician, in different buildings, at roughly the same time. Before 1999, Buffalo Medical Group was wrestling with this ordinary piece of medical arithmetic. Hospital work was eating into office time. The solution would require changing who did the work.
- A physician-owned practice connecting primary care and specialists across Western New York.
- Shared records and dedicated hospital clinicians help move care between settings.
- Recent lab and oncology partnerships are changing where some patients receive services.
BMG created a hospitalist program: clinicians based in the hospital would take responsibility there, while staying in touch with the patient’s regular doctor. At discharge, information would travel back to the outpatient team. The family doctor could keep seeing the people waiting at the office. Someone had been given explicit responsibility for the transition.
That small organizational adjustment is a useful way into this company. Medicine contains spectacular interventions. It also contains the quieter question of whether the next person knows what happened. Buffalo Medical Group has spent decades arranging its business around that question.
Four doctors changed the unit of work
In 1946, Ramsdell Gurney, Murray S. Howland Jr., George F. Koepf and Frank Meyers founded BMG after encountering group practice during World War II. They returned to a profession where solo practice was customary. Their experience suggested that doctors could share knowledge and responsibility within a group.
Today, the practice offers primary care alongside specialties including cardiology, dermatology, gastroenterology and orthopedic surgery. Imaging, physical therapy and sleep services add supporting capabilities. The customers are people who need anything from a routine visit to continuing treatment across several specialties. The useful promise is continuity through those different kinds of care.
Scale gives that promise some weight. In April 2025, BMG reported more than 850,000 outpatient visits annually. Visits count encounters, so the figure should not be mistaken for a patient census. It does, however, suggest how often this organization has to get the next step right.
reported by BMG, April 2025
Patients can choose their primary care physician within the group. Specialists and primary care teams use the electronic record to exchange findings, orders and recommendations. The patient-facing distinction is practical: less dependence on carrying the story from one office to another. That is the model’s appeal, rather than a claim that every referral becomes effortless.
There is an important distinction between gathering specialists under a name and connecting their decisions. BMG describes agreements between its primary care division and specialists about managing care. The shared chart supports that arrangement, but someone still needs to review a result and act on it. The organizational work sits behind the familiar sequence of appointments.
A building with fewer detours
Look at Lockport. BMG opened a 19,000-square-foot location on South Transit Road in January 2024. By April 2025, its expansion announcement listed six primary care providers and rotating specialists in fields including pulmonology, orthopedics and gastroenterology, alongside X-ray and ultrasound services.
The rotating specialist matters as much as the building. A community office can offer access to several disciplines without having every specialist permanently stationed there. For patients, that can bring parts of a complicated care routine closer to home. For the group, it provides a way to distribute expertise across its regional footprint.
Western New Yorkers also have alternatives, including UBMD Physicians’ Group, General Physician and independent practices. BMG occupies the regional multispecialty-practice part of that market. Choosing among them still turns on the available doctor, the required specialty and insurance participation. A broad directory is useful only if the particular appointment works.
The inbox has a waiting room
MyBMGChart brings another part of the practice into the home. Patients can see records and results, manage appointments, request prescription refills and communicate with their care team. Eligible visits can happen by video. A computer becomes another entrance to a medical practice with physical offices.
Implementation takes more than switching on a feature. In a 2022 MGMA interview, chief financial officer Deborah Bauer described moving pandemic-era video care from Zoom into the electronic-record platform. Patients could arrange a test appointment with a trainer before the real visit. The rehearsal is a detail worth copying: remove the unfamiliar step before the clinical conversation starts.
“The less that we have to engage outside third parties to do things, the more seamless that is.”
Deborah Bauer · CFO · MGMA, 2022
Easier contact creates work, too. BMG’s patient information reports nearly 600,000 portal messages a year. From June 1, 2024, it clarified that new or complex problems should generally move into an office or telemedicine visit. Certain medical-advice messages requiring expertise and at least five minutes may be billed to insurance. Copays and deductibles can apply; routine refill and scheduling requests remain unbilled.
Routine requestPortal message
New or complex concernOffice or telemedicine visit
Suitable remote appointmentVideo visit through MyBMGChart
For a new patient, the practical starting point is familiar: gather relevant records, list current medicines and review participating insurance plans. BMG’s checklist asks for those details before the appointment. Even a connected practice needs a usable starting record. Patients bringing care from elsewhere have a part in assembling it.
The team extends beyond the building
Coordination increasingly includes outside organizations. BMG discontinued onsite laboratory testing effective December 31, 2025, directing patients to Quest Diagnostics and its regional locations. Older descriptions of an in-house lab therefore need a date attached. For patients accustomed to doing everything in one building, this changes the itinerary.
In January 2026, Catholic Health announced a partnership with BMG for oncology, hematology and infusion care. The stated goal is broader community access and continuity. BMG’s subsequent notice describes temporary relocations from August 17 through year-end during renovations. Anyone using those services should check the current appointment location.
The business runs on clinical services paid through insurance and patient payments, with value-based contracts also part of its reported model. Convenience still has a price shaped by coverage and the service involved. Integration also has limits: some concerns need examination, appointment capacity varies, and the portal states that access is restricted to the United States.
The lesson travels beyond medicine. Give the next step an owner. Put information where that person can use it. Make the route clear to the person waiting. Four physicians chose to work together in 1946. The work since then has been making that choice useful, one handoff at a time.