Geisinger Health System Teams With St. Luke's To Manage Healthcare Costs
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Partnership is designed to lower premiums and improve access to care.
In yet another sign of the changing healthcare landscape, Geisinger Health System announced a partnership with Lehigh Valley, PA-based St. Luke’s University Health Network designed to curb rising healthcare costs and improve access to affordable, high quality healthcare. The partnership will go into effect January 1, 2017 and is pending approval by the Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Teresa D. Miller.
Under the terms of the agreement, St. Luke’s six hospitals and more than 270 medical sites will become clinical partners with Geisinger’s 12 hospital campuses and 350 sites operating under the Geisinger Health Plan.
“We’re introducing another level of competition in healthcare insurance, in healthcare collaboration, in healthcare cooperation,” Lehighvalleylive.com quoted St. Luke’s CEO Richard Anderson as saying.
“Now you have a health system here that’s backed by an insurance company that for 100 years has really focused on better care, closer to home, easier to get to, easier to understand, more coordinated,” added Geisinger CEO Dr. David Feinberg.
This partnership is important in a marketplace seeing fewer and fewer insurers offering options to customers, resulting in rising premiums and less comprehensive plans. Geisinger and St. Luke's believe working together will allow the two to implement new models in care, as well as collaborating with physicians. They also believe working together will save patients money.
“You consider the fact that we at the hospitals control the quality, control the affordable care, and we also own the insurance company. We will be able to lower our prices because we have another option for people to select,” said Anderson.
Feinberg said Geisinger Health Plan patients see better outcomes at lower costs if they see a Geisinger network doctor and seek treatment at Geisinger facilities. “So what we've decided is to replicate that, we need to find a clinical partner to integrate with our health insurance plan that delivers that same world-class care. It's really the beginning of a partnership where we're saying, loud and clear, that our partner in the Lehigh Valley is St. Luke's.
“When you get to the heart of it, we are two organizations focused on taking the best care of patients and we're excited to partner with a health-care system that aligns with our vision and values.”