Now nearly two years into their innovative alliance, Philips and Georgia Regents Medical Center report numerous positive impacts—including a savings so far of $7 million for GRMC—and they see the arrangement as an industry model for the future.
Through the alliance Philips addresses the current and future clinical, operational and equipment needs at GRMC's multiple locations, including the Georgia Regents Medical Center, Children's Hospital of Georgia, Georgia Regents University Cancer Center and the system's outpatient clinics, which serve up to 6 million healthcare consumers in Georgia and South Carolina.
Philips provides services including consulting, advanced medical technologies and maintenance, all within pre-determined monthly operational costs. According to Philips, this is the company's largest such long-term alliance in the U.S. It follows similar international collaborations that have also resulted in improved clinical operations and care delivery, the company says.
Key updates since June 2013 include the following:
- GRMC has seen a 35% reduction in technology spending.
- Having a monthly unitary payment that covers all technology and services allows GRMC to better have a more stable financial plan.
- GRMC has replaced and upgraded 525 patient monitoring devices, 800 imaging and care devices, and other technologies, constituting $15M of the financial model.
- Strategic guidance from Philips helped GRMC win a bid to establish a new community hospital in Columbia County.
Matt Bierbaum, Vice President of Managed Services and Enterprise Partnerships at Philips, spoke with Healthcare Dive to discuss what he sees as some of the main benefits and lessons learned.
Lessons learned
Bierbaum notes that while Philips is managing and providing GRMC's core medical technology and many areas of healthcare IT application, the alliance isn't a sole-source agreement, but rather, is focused in Philips' areas of clinical and technology expertise. "Really we are about building a services and management capability infrastructure, where we ensure we're bringing the right equipment, IT services, implementation, consulting, education, resources, that can really deliver the impact that Georgia Regents is focused on."
He sees several key areas in which the alliance is impacting not only GRMC's technology framework but the way care is delivered and coordinated.
One primary focus area from the start was GRMC's fragmented picture archiving and communication system (PACS) technology for medical imaging. Philips took this on, and it's one of the most comprehensive and integrated solutions the company has implemented in this area, Bierbaum says.
"Georgia Regents with Philips really took on the vision that if we want to create an enabling infrastructure and technology to drive change, it had to be designed and developed in an integrated framework from the beginning, and not done in a piecemeal way," he says.
This enabled a comprehensive rollout along with flexibility in how to deploy the technology. Also, by getting involved early in process, Philips was able to help establish the clinical requirements and project plan, whereas historically, hospitals would do that in isolation. By having the technology vendor come in early on, the health system gained a partner with knowledge of the technology, systems and applications.
"As a result of that, not only were we really able to design an accelerated solution in less than 12 months, but it was fully integrated from day one across the modalities and departments," Bierbaum said.
Bierbaum's second example is in how Philips impacted GRMC's patient monitoring and clinical medical technology networking. "Georgia Regents needed a pretty broad transformation and deployment of the new monitoring system across the hospital," he says. He notes the system, like most, had been deploying different types of technology to implement or fix things as needed, rather than looking to build a solution that interfaces in a cohesive way with their EMR system.
Now, they are in process of building a new clinical monitoring network in coordination with system clinicians, IT personnel, project managers and the EMR vendor, to ensure they are getting a comprehensive and integrated solution that is focused on meeting GRMC's specific challenges.
The third area in which Bierbaum highlights Philips' contributions at GRMC is in the area of radiology. He notes that much of the equipment had been overdue for replacement, and Philips was able to move analog technology over to digital solutions that are integrated in their EMR in a wholesale way, immediately changing workflow.
Accomplishing all of these cohesive transformations in such a short time is all enabled by this partnership, Bierbaum says.
A model for the future?
Philips is seeing interest from others in the healthcare industry in pursuing this type of model, Bierbaum says.
For those considering whether it's the right path for their health system, he suggests two conditions for success, based on his experience:
1. That the technology provider or vendor and the health system are aligned on their strategies and goals for why to enter into a partnership. For example, some systems are facing challenges managing diverse patient populations, while others are focused on cost reduction or the broader advantages of standardization. "What's important to understand is why the health system wants to embark on this, and that's how we spend a lot of our time in evaluating these opportunities," Bierbaum says.
2. The second piece Philips has learned is that success requires a large amount of internal alignment in the health system. A hospital needs to have transformed itself into an integrated care delivery system and be looking for partners and vendors who can work with them in that structure. "It's important the health system has started down that journey and sees the value in that type of operating model," Bierbaum says. "Because we're seeing that in health systems across the U.S., that's why we think this trend will not only grow but accelerate into the future."