Five Missouri hospitals have created a partnership to improve access to healthcare, efficiency of treatment and reduce cost.
The network consists of Capital Region Medical Center in Jefferson City, Lake Regional Health System in Osage Beach, Bothwell Regional Health Center in Sedalia, Hannibal Regional Healthcare System and University of Missouri Health Care in Columbia.
"Each healthcare system will have equal representation in the governance of the network," said Mary Jenkins, public relations manager for the University of Missouri Health System. "We are going to have task forces comprised of physicians and other leaders from other systems and these task forces will be sharing data and best care practices. Ultimately, if we work together to improve the coordination of care and access to care we think that is going to lower healthcare cost."
Discussions to create the partnership started in 2011. The list of the leaders of the equally represented governing body is complete, Jenkins said. The ambassadors who will represent Capital Region are hospital President Ed Farnsworth, Vice President of Medical Affairs Randall Haight and Jack Pletz, hospital board chair, said Lindsey Huhman, public relations for Capital Region.
"All of the collaborative members of the healthcare systems made an equal investment of $40,000 each," Jenkins said. "That initial invest provided for the legal work to form the health network, and also went toward a consultant who was involved with helping the collaborative members with strategic planing and determining the structure of the network."
The majority or the benefits form the partnership come from sharing data and practices, she said.
"A lot of it is communication," Huhman said about how the improvements will surface. "There is nothing that will be immediate in terms of change, but moving forward one of the goals is to have easy recalled electronic medical records. And there are many little ways that cost can be reduced by eliminating redundancy."
She explained how electronic medical records could reduce cost by eliminating the redundancy of repeating diagnostic test. In other words, if a patient received a computerized tomography scan, or CT scan, at one hospital and then was sent to another location there would be no need to do the test again. The doctor's at the second location would have access to the electronic record, and thus the results of the previous test.
Another example of how the partnership could save patients money was if a patient needed a specialist at University of Missouri Health Care, but there was a physician with the same specialty at a closer hospital within the partnership. In this case the patient could be referred to the closer doctor, reducing the patients cost for care in terms of time and money, Huhman said.
The partnership would also increase the patients' access to University of Missouri Health Care's specialists and expand specialty services to more rural areas of Mid-Missouri through creative physician recruitment, Jenkins said.
"We have more than 500 faculty positions and probably, I would say, more then 70 specialties," Jenkins said about her hospital. "We are already working with some of these hospitals to make sure their patients have access to specialty care."
Jenkins gave an example of how the Columbia hospital could recruit an orthopedic surgeon who would work at their site half the time, and the other half the surgeon would work at Capital Region.
There is no certainty, yet, if the partnership will have an overlap in insurance coverage, both Jenkins and Huhman said. The coverage will be determined on a case-by-case basis by each individual hospital until there is a final decision on the matter of accepted insurance, Huhman said.