By Joan Goodchild
Community Reporter
Southborough – Pediatrician Dr. Marvin Ostrovsky has served as president of Southboro Medical Group (SMG) for 29 years and in that time he's seen vast changes in the field of medicine.
“There have been multiple, major strides in medical care,” he said. “We now have the ability to communicate with electronic medical records, and that has assisted us with closer communication with other practitioners, other hospitals. We are able to get almost instantaneous feedback.”
Ostrovsky, 69, is known as “Dr. O” to his young patients. While not retiring, Ostrovsky has just finished up his tenure as president of Southboro Medical Group. He will continue to see patients and serve as the group's chairman of the board. He is the last of the founding members of the practice to still have a presence in the organization.
Ostrovsky and three other physicians founded Southboro Medical Group in 1972 as a physician-owned and -operated practice. In its 39 years, SMG has expanded into a large, multi-specialty group with physicians who practice adult, pediatric and OB/GYN medicine. In 2004, it became one of the founding medical groups of Atrius Health. It now has more than 75 providers and more than 450 employees, serving 60,000 patients in the region with offices in Southborough, Westborough, Framingham and Milford.
“Our goal from the outset was to be able to communicate easily with patients and to control the cost of healthcare,” Ostrovsky said. “And because of our desire to keep people out of hospitals and emergency rooms, we extended our hours to some nights and weekends over the years to assist patients.”
Ostrovsky said he intends to continue to play a role in bringing SMG into the future with an emphasis on technology that will assist physicians with clear clinical pathways to patient care and more reliance on what he called a “team approach to efficient care.”
SMG now has close relationships with visiting nurse associations and home health aides to provide comprehensive care both in the hospital and at home, added Ostrovsky.
“Coordination of care is key,” he said. “We are involved now in issues like patient travel and other things that we hadn's been involved with in the past. It's been a very fruitful number of years, and I’m looking forward to seeing things progress even more for the benefit of patients.”
