Celebrating 30 Years: The CarePoint Origin Story

The year was 1995.

The meeting took place at HealthONE’s corporate offices in downtown Denver.

On one side of the table was Jeff Dorsey, then-president and CEO of the large healthcare system’s Colorado division.

On the other side was a man by the name of Steve Hoffenberg, a practicing emergency physician at HCA HealthONE Rose (formerly Rose Medical Center).

At the time, the emergency medicine teams at Rose and HealthONE’s four other Denver-area hospitals — known today as HCA HealthONE Aurora, HCA HealthONE Mountain Ridge, HCA HealthONE Presbyterian St. Luke’s, and HCA HealthONE Swedish — were independent and unrelated to one another.

Change was coming, Dorsey said — HealthONE leaders were committed to shift to a single entity for the management of all five emergency departments, and national corporate staffing companies were eager to move into the market.

And so, Dr. Hoffenberg and his fellow physicians had a choice to make: Hand the keys over to one of those national companies or find a way to unite.

They chose each other.

While it wasn’t always easy, the five groups became one. Dr. Hoffenberg stepped away from practicing medicine to dedicate his time to constructing the new group, spending a full year ironing out governance, ownership, management, billing, banking, and finance details.

The new group’s name: CarePoint.

The physicians — only 50 or so of them back then — at the five hospitals began practicing as CarePoint doctors in 1996.

To commemorate CarePoint’s 30th anniversary, the company’s marketing team sat down with Dr. Hoffenberg and two of the practice’s founding partners, Drs. Steve Heinz and Don Lefkowits, to learn more about those early years and what the formula was for transforming an idea into a lasting, physician-owned legacy.

Overcoming Obstacles to Build Something Democratic

Uniting five separate groups under one umbrella was no small feat. As Drs. Hoffenberg, Heinz, and Lefkowits recalled, initial reactions ranged from skepticism to outright disbelief.

“When I first heard the idea, my response was, ‘It’s never going to happen. There’s just no way to make it work,’” one of them recalled.

There were myriad practical matters to sort out: state rights vs. federal rights, the ownership framework, and governance details, just to name a few.

Beneath the logistics was an even bigger hurdle — trust.

Before they became CarePoint, each of the groups had a distinct culture and way of doing things.

“We were a practice. That’s really key to the history of CarePoint — maintaining the reality that we’re a medical practice, and we’re here to benefit our patients, our communities, and our providers.”

- Steve Hoffenberg, MD, CarePoint Founder

However, what brought and kept everyone together was a shared desire to preserve their autonomy. The physicians didn’t want corporate shareholders or private equity involved. They wanted a practice — a true practice. One that they owned, one that they managed, one that put patients and physicians — and no one else — first.

“All these national companies take money off the top. They’re businesses. We were a practice,” Dr. Hoffenberg said. “That’s really key to the history of CarePoint — maintaining the reality that we’re a medical practice, and we’re here to benefit our patients, our communities, and our providers.”

Dr. Hoffenberg built CarePoint on a simple, democratic promise: one physician, one vote. The doctors themselves would make decisions on pay rates and bonuses, shift scheduling, quality standards, and other important matters. The expenses of running the practice would be paid, but everything else would go straight back to the physicians delivering the care.

That fairness and simplicity laid the groundwork for deep, lasting trust.

A Patient-First Philosophy

While the business model constructed by Dr. Hoffenberg kept the lights on, a shared clinical philosophy is what gave CarePoint its soul.

That philosophy? “If you’re doing what’s right for the patient, you can never go wrong,” Dr. Heinz said.

Dr. Lefkowits recalled a powerful story that illustrates what that philosophy looks like in the real world. Years after retiring, while he was traveling in Istanbul, Turkey, a fellow traveler spotted him and took him by the arm.

“You took care of my mother in the ER at Rose,” she said.

The lady didn’t say anything about Dr. Lefkowits’ making the correct diagnosis or administering the correct medications. Here’s what she did say:

“I remember how nice you were when my mother first came in. She was really cold, and you went and got her a blanket and tucked her into bed and made her warm,” Dr. Lefkowits recalled.

“Patients remember kindness,” Dr. Lefkowits said. “They don’t necessarily know if you chose the right antibiotic or procedure, or if the sutures were done correctly, but they remember how you made them feel.”

That commitment to humanity didn’t just comfort patients from day to day; it shaped a practice and transformed how emergency physicians were viewed in the hospital. CarePoint doctors didn’t just manage the EDs — they went on to become chiefs of staff, department chairs, committee chairs, and respected clinical partners across every specialty.

Growing but Keeping the “North Star” in Focus

Growth for the sake of growth wasn’t part of Dr. Hoffenberg and the founding partners’ agenda.

Growth happened naturally because more emergency physicians, as well as doctors and advanced practice providers in other specialties, were drawn to CarePoint’s democratic, physician-owned and led model.

The core emergency medicine group expanded to include pediatric emergency medicine, inpatient neurology, telemedicine, wound care and hyperbaric oxygen, hospital medicine, neurosurgery and spine, and physical medicine and rehabilitation.

Today, CarePoint has over 700 physicians and APPs who provide on-site care at more than 70 hospitals spanning eight states. The group’s teleneurologists provide care in over 300 hospitals across 26 states.

“If you’re doing what’s right for the patient, you can never go wrong.”

- Steve Heinz, MD, CarePoint Founding Partner

The group took off because, well, it simply couldn’t help it — clinicians across the country wanted to be part of it.

“People were attracted to our model and joined,” Dr. Hoffenberg said. “We hadn’t really anticipated or sought the kind of growth we had, but it happened.”

Through it all — the growth, the competitive landscape, the never-ending changes in healthcare — CarePoint’s clinicians never lost sight of the original mission: Protect the culture and stay laser-focused on providing compassionate, high-quality patient care.

That “north star,” if you will, is what guided Drs. Hoffenberg, Heinz, and Lefkowits for many years.

And it’s what continues to guide CarePoint 30 years later.