Dive Brief:
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GE Healthcare and Jefferson Health on Monday announced an eight-year shared-risk partnership that looks to remove redundancies and maximize sourcing efficiencies.
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The organizations said the program could lead to $500 million to $1 billion in efficiencies. Those savings “can be directed toward services that best meet patient needs over the term of this relationship.”
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The partnership is part of a growing list of collaborations involving value-based care, lowering costs and improving care and outcomes.
Dive Insight:
The whole idea is in these partnerships is for both sides to have more skin in the game. The goal is to have payments directly connected to outcomes, costs and/or patient care will result in better healthcare.
In this project, GE Healthcare will work alongside Jefferson Health staff to understand operations and processes and use technology to help with care delivery. Jefferson Health is affiliated with Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and has nine hospitals, 35 outpatient and urgent care locations and physician practices in the greater Philadelphia and southern New Jersey area.
GE has taken on a greater interest in healthcare and plans to invest more than $500 million in software by 2018. GE Healthcare is also working with Partners HealthCare on a 10-year collaboration that will create applications to improve productivity and patient outcomes in diagnostic imaging. The two companies also hope to develop new business models for artificial intelligence in healthcare.
Value-based payment models are seen as the future in healthcare. The CMS and private payers have both shown interest in value-based bundled payments.
Carolyn Magill, CEO at bundled payment manager Remedy Partners, recently told Healthcare Dive that bundled payment programs will eventually spread throughout the healthcare system, stating, “We will soon see the expansion of bundles beyond medical services to include pharmacy, behavioral health and social determinants. In the future, bundled payments will increasingly become a building block for contracting strategies across the spectrum of models related to the transition to value-based care.”
Though there is widespread interest in value-based programs, a recent survey found that one-quarter of healthcare executives said they don't have any plans to create any value-based payment programs this year. So, for many, the jury is still out on value-based programs.