Highmark Inc. expects to control 75 percent of Jefferson Regional Medical Center's board of directors by the end of the year, officials said on Tuesday. The two nonprofits announced a "strategic partnership" in which the state's largest insurer will assume $200 million of the Jefferson Hills hospital's debts and obligations, pay $75 million into Jefferson Regional's community foundation and upgrade its emergency department and clinical services. Officials declined to speculate about the cost of the upgrades. "This is not a rescue," Highmark Chairman J. Robert Baum said. "This is instead part of a growth strategy we both have."
In May, the Clinic held its third annual patient experience conference, attended by a record 843 caregivers from around the world, to talk about what it has done and to hear from leaders at other hospitals—including Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and New York University's Langone Medical Center—about what worked at their institutions to transform patient experience. A recent Harvard Business School case study on patient experience highlighted the Cleveland Clinic as one of the institutions at the forefront of this shift back to patients, or "patient-centered care," as it's called. The Clinic's shift began soon after heart surgeon Toby Cosgrove became CEO in 2004.
There is a possibility we could improve overall healthcare in the country while reducing costs and speeding services if hospitals joined together with insurance companies to provide centralized, secure access to patient information. Now THAT would be big data. Imagine the ability to sift through clinical data from every hospital in the U.S. to look for trends in healthcare. It would be much easier to share important test results between doctors and specialists when required. Patients would benefit by having their entire medical histories readily available in an emergency. There are thousands of examples of the benefits of moving patient data to the cloud.
Carolinas HealthCare System, already the second largest public hospital system in the country, is expanding again. Officials announced Tuesday that they've signed a 10-year management services agreement with Greensboro-based Cone Health, which has five hospitals and more than $1 billion in annual revenue. When the agreement takes effect Oct. 1, Carolinas HealthCare will own or manage nearly 40 hospitals and have $8 billion in annual revenue. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. It's the first time Carolinas HealthCare has affiliated with a healthcare institution in the Triad area that includes Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point.
The state's largest health insurer and Connecticut's only specialized children's hospital ended a bitter contract dispute late Monday night that had left many patients scrambling since mid-April to make sure their children would continue to receive care. North Haven-based Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut and Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford announced their new contract Tuesday after operating without an agreement since April 15. Both parties said the agreement will retroactively cover services at CCMC and at its related specialty group as in-network—allaying concerns for Anthem customers who faced having to pay out-of-network rates.
Central Maine Medical Center's loss is MaineGeneral Medical Center's gain. CMMC's four trauma surgeons are going to work for MaineGeneral in Augusta, doubling that hospital's staff of surgeons, according to MaineGeneral CEO Chuck Hays. The four doctors had made up CMMC's entire team of trauma surgeons. Three left earlier this year; the fourth is scheduled to leave this month. They weren't fired. It is unclear exactly why the doctors decided to leave Lewiston. Chuck Gill, spokesman for Central Maine Healthcare, CMMC's parent organization, has said the hospital and surgeons had "a professional disagreement."