Health Systems Form Non-Profit Collaborative
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
The Cleveland Clinic is among those aiming to reduce costs and deliver quality care statewide.
Six Ohio health systems have come together to form the Midwest Health Collaborative to reduce costs and deliver quality care to large populations across Ohio, according to The Columbus Business First. The collaboration will enable information sharing among the network, an effort that will help boost quality while establishing cost efficiency.
The Midwest Health Collaborative includes the Cleveland Clinic, Canton-based Aultman Hospital, Dayton-based Premier Health, Toledo-based ProMedica and Cincinnati-based TriHealth.
“Somewhere up ahead – I can’t tell you exactly when – the pressure and the demand by those paying for care are (to seek) more predictable price and predictability on outcomes,” Mike Bernstein, OhioHealth senior vice president and chief strategy officer, told Columbus Business First. “We absolutely need to be prepared.”
The MHC represents 40 hospitals and hundreds of care sites across Ohio. ABC News reported the six health care organizations will remain independent but will work together to assess the feasibility of creating a statewide provider network; exchange best practices; share resources; reduce costs; develop innovative ways to deliver health care across large populations; and reduce care variation.
Among the strategies MHC members will employ are a commitment to active clinical management; the development of standardized care pathways; the use of real-time data and predictive analytics to enhance personalized care; an optimization of patient-centered medical homes and care coordination skills through collaboration.
“The whole framework for how healthcare is organized, being delivered and reimbursed is shifting from a fee-for-service basis to a value-based basis, and with that there's continued interest in improving patient safety and lowering cost,” Cleveland Clinic's chief strategy officer Ann Huston told Cleveland.com. “We think there's a lot of advantage in working together to go after improved quality and patient safety.”
“There are a lot of areas that we can work on to improve health and lower costs by just learning how other systems are approaching these things,” Premier President and CEO Jim Pancoast told The Dayton Daily News. “What we’ve been doing over the last probably 10 years is individually talking to each other, and at some point, we just kind of collectively said why don’t we try this together.”
A similar partnership – Health Innovations Ohio – was launched in 2013 and includes University Hospitals in Cleveland, Summa Health System in Akron, Mount Carmel Health System in Columbus and Catholic Health Partners in Cincinnati.