Providence and Premera latest PCMH partners

RENTON, WA – In a pairing that matches the state’s largest healthcare provider and largest insurer, Providence Health & Services and Premera Blue Cross announced last month an alliance to launch multiple patient-centered medical homes in Providence clinics throughout Washington state.

 

The program targeted five clinics in Olympia, Walla Walla, Spokane and Everett that will serve roughly 2,700 patients. The hopes are that by spreading the program across multiple sites, the two partners can accelerate the learning curve and effective adoption of the PCMH model.

 

“We believe this multi-market approach has the potential to deliver rich and more robust results,” said John Fletcher, senior vice president for Providence Health & Services. “Drawing on the statewide scale of Providence and Premera, we are designing the programs to apply lessons learned in diverse settings more quickly and efficiently. We share identical goals of improving the care experience, increasing care coordination and making care more affordable, all while ensuring the highest quality of care for those we serve.”

 

According to Rich Maturi, senior vice president for Health Care Delivery Systems with Premera, the two organizations have a strong history of working together “based on a shared commitment to improve quality of care for patients while controlling costs.”

 

The payer and provider have also rubbed elbows while serving on a variety of panels exploring quality of care issues through the years and via a successful program shared with a third partner, the Everett Clinic. Maturi said Providence and Premera began detailed discussion about launching a program focused on primary care in 2009.

 

The Providence-Premera alliance is merely the latest in the state which has seen plenty of activity by payers and providers to create new models of care that will attempt to achieve the s so-called “Triple Aim” of improving population health, improving patient experiences of care while also attempt to reduce – or at least slow the growth of – costs.

 

Other Washington payers and providers pursuing new care delivery and payment models include Community Health Plan of Washington, Regence BlueShield, UW Medicine, Virginia Mason, Group Health Cooperative and Swedish Medical.

 

Group Health Cooperative’s results have been strong enough that it recently converted all 26 of its facilities to medical homes after seeing significant reductions in the emergency room visits and patient admissions.

The state’s Health Care Authority also has jumped into the reform pool with its recent launch of a medical home pilot project in cooperation with seven private payers.

 

In this active environment of reform, it is clear that Providence and Premera want much more than to prove the concept in a number of primary care clinics across the state.

 

“By working together we hope to create a more efficient, patient friendly health system that can serve Washington for years to come,” said Brian Ancell, executive vice president with Premera.

 

But the proof won’t be just doing the but how well the PCMH model can be executed broadly across large, multi site provider groups such as Providence.

 

“We plan on taking the lessons learned from our work with Providence and other providers on related projects to build toward system-wide solutions that can drive the most value and improvement,” Maturi noted. “Collectively, we won’t achieve our goals unless we can build models that can scale up across the markets we serve.”