Seven or eight partners. That is where Hector Mejia, a physician leader at Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic, sees a practice enter an awkward stage: too large for informal management, too small for the infrastructure of a much bigger group. Consider an investment that takes ten years to repay. A new partner and a colleague approaching retirement may reasonably vote differently. The obstacle to expansion can be the calendar.
- OSM shares administrative work across orthopedic practices.
- Practicing surgeons retain majority ownership and clinical governance, according to the company.
- Its growth toolkit includes capital, recruitment and proprietary analytics.
Orthopaedic Solutions Management occupies that uncomfortable space between being independent and having the resources to stay independent. The Tampa company brings practices into a common management platform. Billing, staffing, technology and purchasing become shared capabilities. Physicians keep a central role in clinical decisions. The interesting question is how much business infrastructure can be combined before local judgment gets squeezed.
01 / Independence needs a back office
Recent company announcements date OSM’s founding to 2019. MD Healthcare Partners identifies Florida Orthopaedic Institute and itself as the founding organizations. That combination matters: an established clinical practice supplied medical expertise, while an investment and operating partner supplied business experience. OSM grew around an existing delivery system, with patients, physicians and institutional relationships already in place.
In March 2020, Florida Orthopaedic Institute and five OrthoCare Florida practices announced a merger under the FOI name. The combined practice reported 150 providers at 17 Tampa Bay locations. This was the practical foundation: enough activity to make common systems useful, and enough local history to make continuity valuable.
OSM’s direct audience is practice owners and administrators. Patients encounter its work through the partner practices. The service list is deliberately unglamorous: accounting, revenue cycle, payer contracting, compliance, facilities, recruitment and IT. A surgeon cannot operate a practice on surgical skill alone. Someone must negotiate the contracts, collect the money and make sure tomorrow’s staff actually exists.
The expertise is narrower than a general medical management business. OSM is organized around musculoskeletal care and subspecialization. Its network reports more than 40 active research studies and more than 75 published articles annually. Those company figures describe a clinical and academic base alongside the administrative operation. They also explain why a prospective partner might care which physicians are already inside the network, rather than choosing solely on the length of the service list.
02 / The dashboard behind the doctor
OSMetrics is OSM’s proprietary business intelligence tool. The company describes it as bringing operational and financial information together to show practice performance. Its listed applications include analytics, scheduling optimization and value-based care. This makes it part of the management proposition: a way to see how the organization is functioning across activities that otherwise belong to separate departments.
There is a useful distinction here. OSM sells a relationship with a management platform; its public offering combines services, investment support and software. Reading it as an ordinary dashboard subscription misses the people who must act on the numbers. A scheduling problem can require recruitment, different workflows or investment in facilities. The screen is only one part of the response.
03 / Growth has more than one engine
In a 2022 industry interview, Charles Davis described three routes to expansion: new physicians and locations, hospital relationships, and practice partnerships. At the time, OSM reported averaging ten physician hires and two new locations annually. Those are historical operating figures, not a forecast. They show a strategy with several moving parts.
The access detail is especially revealing. Davis said the organization monitored clinical access daily and aimed to offer appointment options within 24 hours. That was an operating objective, not a universal patient guarantee. For another practice, the copyable habit is regular measurement: understand where patients wait before assuming that growth requires another acquisition.
The partnership announcements add clinical specificity. Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic joined in 2023. Orlando Hand Surgical Associates followed in March 2025, bringing hand and upper-extremity expertise. Florida Orthopaedic Associates joined that October. In each of the latter two announcements, OSM said the practice would retain its brand, offices and physician leadership. Familiar names remain useful assets.
In August 2026, Orlando Orthopaedic Center and its affiliated outpatient surgery center became OSM’s 23rd partnership. OOC brought 24 orthopedic specialists and eight locations. OSM promised to preserve the brand and offices while supporting additional providers, technology and infrastructure. The arrangement connects a local reputation to a larger pool of operating resources.
04 / Read the decision rights
Physician leadership alone does not distinguish every orthopedic platform. HOPCo also describes physician-led management, analytics and value-based care. Hospital employment and remaining independent are other options. OSM’s particular proposition combines majority physician ownership, clinical governance and shared operating support. It also has investment backing: Vesey Street Capital Partners lists OSM in its portfolio.
“Be very skeptical, for sure.”Hector Mejia, TOC physician partner, speaking to Becker’s about choosing an MSO
Mejia’s account points to what changed the calculation for his practice: physician representation in governance and the ability to spread investment risk. His caution is equally useful. A practice should establish its goals before choosing a partner. The lesson extends beyond medicine: decide what authority must remain local before designing the shared organization.
Capital commitments still need patience. Davis’s growth account stresses that infrastructure takes money and time. In value-based arrangements, OSM’s payer-strategy leader Michael Stubee has also emphasized explicit risk terms and recurring reviews of cost data. Unexpected payment changes can undermine physician support. Shared ownership does not remove the need to inspect the contract.
OSM’s October 2026 COO appointment adds a final clue about the work ahead: Jason McClair’s remit includes operational consistency and adoption of best practices. Expansion creates an integration job. The model makes most sense when physicians want common infrastructure and can agree on investment priorities. If those conditions are absent, adding scale can simply give an unresolved disagreement more offices.