Dive Brief:

• The Cleveland Clinic is joining the Midwest Health Collaborative, which also includes Columbus-based OhioHealth, Canton-based Aultman Hospital, Dayton-based Premier Health, Toledo-based ProMedica and Cincinnati-based TriHealth. All hospitals will remain independent. 
• One of the Midwest Health Collaborative's first goals will be to share best practices among the hospitals, and explore the idea of becoming a statewide network of providers. This would allow all of the member health systems to deliver the best care at the lowest cost, they believe. 
• Cleveland Clinic is already part of other such ventures like the High Value Healthcare Collaborative, which includes Mayo Clinic and four other major health care organization partners.  

Dive Insight:

What's happening in Ohio mirrors the rest of the country, where the sentiment toward collaboration in the name of quality improvement and cost control is growing. But whether these collaborations can effectively churn out lower prices and better outcomes when so much coordination is involved is what remains to be seen, in Cleveland and beyond. Coordinating care requires a lot of interoperability, and could end up costing a lot before true savings are realized.