About Us

When you ask people who they want to be making decisions about their healthcare most will answer: Doctors.

Physician-Led Network
in NorCal and Central Valley

At Meritage, Doctors are the ones making decisions about your healthcare. Meritage is a network of 2100 local physicians administering care for HMO patients in Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Fresno & Madera Counties.

Meritage has contracts with most Commercial HMO plans and five Medicare Advantage plans (for a full list of contracted plans click here). All told, Meritage primary care physicians provide medical services to over nearly half a million residents of NorCal and Central Valley.

Benefiting Our Members & Physicians

Patients in Meritage Medical Network have access to the highest quality and most caring physicians in NorCal and Central Valley. All Meritage physicians are Board Certified in the specialty they practice in which means they are up to date on the latest clinical information and are overseen by the Medical Board of California. In addition, Meritage has Care Managers and Care Coordinators dedicated to helping patients who can benefit from additional individualized care, especially when they are transitioning from one care setting to another, such as going from the Hospital back to their home.

Meritage provides for our physicians in various ways to enable them to focus on providing the best care for their patients. Whether a physician is running their own independent practice or is part of a large medical group – Meritage is there for our physicians.

Awards

We think our physicians are pretty amazing and we’re thrilled to have received recognition and awards for clinical quality, patient satisfaction, employee health and satisfaction, and health technology (full details on our awards page).

History of Meritage Medical Network

Meritage Medical Network (originally known as Marin IPA*) was formed in 1981 to organize the physicians of Marin County, California into an Individual Practice Association (IPA) to accept HMO insurance risk contracts together. Since then, Meritage has expanded into additional markets and products.

About Our Name: Meritage Medical Network

Meritage was initially a word that a group of winemakers came up with to describe the French/Bordeaux style of winemaking, where two or more Bordeaux grapes are blended together to create a quality varietal. Winemakers wanted to ensure that every drop of wine made in this style had the same high quality, and so they created a membership, which had very specific criteria that needed to be met to qualify the wine as a Meritage.

Though healthcare has little to do with winemaking, Meritage, is a group of independent doctors who came together to create exceptional quality healthcare, with the support of other healthcare professionals in the areas of utilization, claims, customer service, provider relations, care management services, human resources, accounting and IT. Physician-led, we work interconnectedly, interrelatedly, and at regular intervals, as the definition of what a network suggests: a fabric or structure of cords or wires that cross at regular intervals and are knotted or secured at the crossings. an interconnected or interrelated chain, group, or system.

*IPA: NOT A BEER. An independent practice association (or IPA) is a US term for an association of independent physicians, or other organization that contracts with independent physicians, and provides services to managed care organizations on a negotiated rate.