Dive Brief:
- A collaboration between the University of Florida and Shands Teaching Hospital in Gainesville and Orlando Health to partner on joint purchasing and care improvement seems to be seeing some early success, according to an article in The American Journal of Accountable Care.
- The partners came together in 2010 to provide care access to more than 3 million Florida residents; the collaboration includes clinical integration, data analytics, contracting and operations.
- Since they partnered, the two systems have created several shared clinical programs, including teleconferences for heart failure patients requiring ventricular assist devices or transplant and staffing of pediatric orthopedics at the University of Florida by Orlando health physicians. They've also seen operational benefits. According to the journal article, early results of supply chain analysis identified millions in savings for both organizations.
Dive Insight:
This exercise seems to be a great success so far. According to Kavita Patel, M.D., of the Brookings Institution, the clinical and health services the two organizations have developed over the past 12 months worked well because the two organizations started by looking at clinical opportunities, and then moved on to operational projects. Patel suggests that organizations considering an ACO approach should consider a regional collaborative such as this one, as it can serve as a useful intermediate step.