Intermountain Healthcare

Dan Beckham, writing in Hospitals &  Health Networks, looks at eight systems that have followed consistent strategies to create value-based systems.

The systems are:

1. Advocate Health Care:  Mr. Beckham cites how it turned its physician-hospital organizations “into a super-PHO, becoming the national benchmark for clinically integrated networks.”
2. Banner Health: “Banner centralized leadership and governance, and standardized care and management processes.”
3. Baylor Scott & White Health: “Scott & White brought its highly integrated multi-specialty group practice model and its health plan to the merger, while Baylor brought a robust network of hospitals, surgery centers and entrepreneurial partnerships.”
4. Cleveland Clinic: ”A pioneer in transparency related to demonstrated value and bundled contracts, Cleveland Clinic has combined one of America’s premier multi-specialty group practices with community hospitals and independent physicians to produce a powerful economic engine.”
5. Geisinger Health System: “It is internationally recognized for innovating at the interface between health insurance, inpatient care, outpatient care and physician practice. Few organizations have positioned themselves as purposefully as Geisinger for the transition from volume- to value-based payment.”
6. Intermountain Healthcare: “The late W. Edwards Deming, a quality icon, was a central inspiration for Intermountain’s relentless battle to drive out variation. While many health systems treated total quality management and its variants as a passing fad, Intermountain dug in and made it a way of life. The presence of Intermountain contributes greatly to Utah’s position as one of America’s healthiest places to live.”
7. Mayo Clinic: “Its strength flows, to a great extent, from the team-based multispecialty group practice model that has been central to its operations since its founding, along with its unwavering focus on putting patient interests first. The ‘Mayo way’ is well-engineered and nonnegotiable. No organization has deeper, better-connected data.”
8. Sentara Healthcare: “When other systems experimented with ownership of health plans, then exited in the face of losses, Sentara persevered. When physician employment became too big a financial burden for others, Sentara doubled down. Because it persisted when others folded, it was able to put more than two decades of experience into its intellectual bank vault. It learned to meld a managed care enterprise, a hospital enterprise,  and a physician enterprise into a formidable integrated delivery system.”
   To read all of Mr. Beckham’s piece, please hit this link.