High Falls in downtown Rochester

— Photo by Evilarry

The healthcare-industry speaker, consultant and futurist Ian Morrison, Ph.D., looks at the many decades of success of the Rochester, N.Y., area in community collaboration among providers to better manage costs and improve care.

Among his observations in a Hospitals & Health Networks piece:

“Rochester still leads the country as a beacon of high performance on cost and quality. For Medicaid, the city was hailed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as the most cost-effective in the country. In Dartmouth Atlas and commercial spending analyses, Rochester is a high-value performer. And for commercial self-insured employers like Paychex, the results are remarkable: low deductibles and co-payments not seen by most Americans since the 1990s. If value and affordability are important, we should continue to learn from Rochester.”

Mr. Morrison writes  that “the Rochester experience provides great insights on a number of factors and forces relevant today that we don’t often discuss:

• “Managing bed and technology capacity is a fundamental tool for reducing cost.
• “An engaged business community — activated to do more than simply play with benefit design, and engaged in the measurement and management of healthcare delivery — ensures high quality and low cost, and eliminates unnecessary resource use and capacity.
• “As more burden is placed on state and local communities for risk and financial responsibility, local communities must figure out the best way to come together to serve the people.
• “Going upstream to the determinants of health — diet, nutrition and exercise — is critical in primary prevention such as blood pressure measurement.”

To read his entire essay, please hit this link.