Providence, Swedish Health Launch Employer-Driven ACO

Boeing is the first employer to sign up with the accountable care organization offered jointly by Providence Health & Services and Swedish Medical Center. It is one of several employer-sponsored plans available in the Seattle area.

Seattle's Providence Health & Services and Swedish Medical Center are launching what they're calling one of the nation's first employer-driven accountable care organizations.

Boeing, with about 75,000 employees in the Seattle area, is the first company to sign up with the ACO, which will launch on Jan. 1, 2015.

Joe Gifford, MD, CEO of the Providence-Swedish Health Alliance, says the ACO will give Boeing employees and their families access to a full range of medical services from primary care to subspecialties.

"The part that is most notable about this is two-fold," Gifford says. "One is its scale. This is not a pilot. This is a huge chunk of the Boeing workforce. The other is that it is a direct offering for the employees of Boeing… the insurer plays a part, but is not the primary player at the table."

"The insurance company truly is there at the table but doing very specific things and the real direct arrangement is between the employer and the delivery systems," he says.

Providence and Swedish affiliated in 2012 in part to improve coordination of population health initiatives and value-based care.

Boeing Preferred Partnership ACOs with Providence-Swedish or UW Medicine Accountable Care Network will be one of several employer-sponsored plans available in the Puget Sound area for the airliner makers' nonunion, unionized, and retired employees.

"What Boeing has been most concerned with is providing high-touch care for their employees," Gifford says. "From the beginning they've told us that we are expected to provide a 'delightful' experience for the employees who become our patients. That has been a touchstone from the very beginning of this arrangement."

"Their vision, of course, is that they get more and more Boeing workers to be within the value proposition of an ACO arrangement," Gifford says. "In order to do so, they want to be sure that the experience of the employees as they touch our system is delightful. So, people are going to see a more high-touch concierge level as they walk in and interact with our healthcare system."

Amenities and benefits of the ACO include:

• Same-day or next-day appointments for urgent primary care visits and acute care.
• Concierge service that patients can reach by phone, email or Web.
• Online and mobile access for scheduling primary care appointments, reviewing test results and emailing the care team.
• Proactive support for preventive care and chronic disease management.
• Shared decision-making tools to help patients choose the right treatment options for their lifestyle goals.

"The model of sitting down directly with these customers and their associated payers or administrators all at the same table is really a better way to go than the prior model of fee-for-service-based that does not deliver value," Gifford says.

ACOs are not a novel concept for Providence-Swedish Health Alliance. In December 2013 was approved as a one of only three Medicare ACOs by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and serves more than 25,000 beneficiaries in western region of the state.