Leaders of hospitals across America struggling to remain independent would do well to watch the Value Care Alliance in Connecticut, a collaboration of six hospitals whose leaders seek to maintain institutional independence by, among other things, saving money through such methods as consolidating supply chains. Their aim is to provide very cost-efficient, community-focused care.

VCA member institutions are doing many of the same things that big urban  and teaching hospitals do, such as accountable care organizations; population-health initiatives recognizing the crucial social determinants of health; boosting patient engagement, and bundled payments, even as they seek to minimize “leakage” of well-insured patients to such nearby teaching hospitals as Yale New Haven.

VCA is a grand experiment that provides some hopeful models  for community-hospital independence. We got a sense of this in a recent visit to VCA headquarters, in beautiful Griffin Hospital, in Derby, Conn.

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