The year was 1984.

Dr. Shirish Parikh, head of the Radiology Department at Albany’s Veterans Administration Hospital, saw an opportunity to introduce progressive changes in radiological services. He and a colleague formed East Hudson Radiologists, P.C. and assumed operation of Samaritan Hospital’s radiology department.

Believing that the key to making a difference in the radiology delivery system was to bring more subspecialists into the community, Dr. Parikh continually expanded the practice over the next decade — adding orthopedic radiologists, nuclear medicine and mammography specialists, and neurological radiologists. East Hudson Radiologists was able to attract these specialists by affiliating with various radiology groups, acquiring new hospital contracts and achieving a broad patient base that individual community hospitals could not provide for.

By 1993, East Hudson Radiologists had grown to encompass 20 radiologists serving four hospitals and three out-patient imaging centers, under the name ImageCare Medical Imaging, which cumulatively performed a quarter of the area’s radiology procedures.

Soon thereafter, recognizing a shortage of primary care physicians and the effects of managed care in a region unprepared for it, Dr. Parikh pioneered the idea of forming the first fully-integrated multispecialty group practice in the Capital Region. To reflect the new, expanded role of the practice, it was renamed East Hudson Community Care Physicians in 1993.

In 1994 we received state approval for our multispecialty group and Community Care Physicians (CCP) was born.

The practice began negotiating with several primary care groups in 1995, and the first group of physicians came on board that spring.

Since then, CCP has undergone extensive growth and has become the largest multispecialty medical group in the Capital Region. In January 2018, Community Care Physicians and CapitalCare Medical Group, the second largest multispecialty medical group in the area, merged to form one, consolidated group practice. This consolidation expanded CCP’s primary care network and patients’ access to care.

In 2022, CCP reached another noteworthy milestone – the historic partnership with Capital District Physicians’ Health Plan, Inc. (CDPHP). Under the partnership, Community Care Physicians and CDPHP created what’s known as an integrated delivery system, where the health plan and physician practice work side-by-side to help you – the patient – live a longer, healthier life. This partnership improves the experience for our patients throughout the Capital Region and beyond. As part of the arrangement, CDPHP and CCP created a new management services organization (MSO) called CCP TASS, Inc., which handles the practice’s non-clinical functions. The MSO provides the administrative, back-office work needed to run our clinical practices. The CCP family of practices operate as an independent clinical organization and continue to contract with all interested health plans.

Today, Community Care Physicians remains the largest independent multi-specialty medical group in upstate New York. We are a family of specialists and primary care practitioners who meet the health care needs of hundreds of thousands of patients every year throughout a six-county region, including Albany, Montgomery, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady and Warren counties.

CCP has a long tradition of excellence, and while we’re proud of our past, CCP continues to evolve to shape the care of this region. Building its physician network; adding new medical specialties; anticipating and adapting to changes in the health care delivery system; enhancing its high technology capabilities; improving population health; enhancing the patient experience; improving the work life of our care team; and constantly creating more cost-effective, expeditious ways to deliver the very best in healthcare.

Together, we care for the health of the community, one patient at a time.