New England Baptist Hospital has become a preferred provider for hip and knee replacements in a bundled-payment system for General Electric’s 100,000 employees nationwide.
This is the first such large employer partnership for Roxbury Crossing, Mass.-based New England Baptist but it’s the seventh for GE, which has picked six other preferred hospitals for joint care in other states.
GE, which recently moved its headquarters from Fairfield, Conn., to Boston, will directly contract with the hospital, which will be paid via bundled payments that cover care spanning 60 days.
Big employers are increasingly turning to bundled payments for procedures undergone by their employees in order to cut, and better forecast, costs and improve care.
GE will pay out-of-pocket costs and travel expenses for employees who opt to have surgery at the hospital.
If there are complications within the 60 days of the bundled- payment period, there will be no other charge to GE except for the bundled amount, Virginia Proestakes, GE’s program leader of health operations, told The Boston Globe.
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