Clinical Integration: Shaping the future of healthcare
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Physicians and hospitals are now forced to operate under an ever growing list of demands and government mandates. North Idaho Health Network has a solid 17 year history in dealing with managed care and risk contracts. Neither of these models are attractive to insurance companies any longer and do little to address quality assurance and improvement. North Idaho Health Networks’ vision for the future is to design a system to enable physicians and hospitals to take a more active role in determining the way healthcare is designed, delivered, and experienced locally.
North Idaho Health Network has entered into an engagement with The Camden Group to evaluate north Idaho’s readiness to move forward with a Clinical Integration (CI) Strategy.
Across the country Clinical Integration is emerging as a promising model. Developing a Clinically Integrated Health System in North Idaho Could:
- Speed the adoption and common use of health information technology, creating access to complete patient information
- Foster collaboration to deliver higher quality care
- Create differentiation in the market as a high quality provider
- Improve the ability to recruit medical talent to the area
- Stabilize physician income
- Reduce the tyranny of healthcare waste by diminishing duplication of tests and services
- Create a system that will reduce administrative burdens around credentialing, quality reporting and metrics
- Change reimbursement structure to promote goals of quality and overall cost control
- Promote quality through the local adoption of best-practices
- Provide the data necessary to demonstrate value through quality outcomes enabling providers to jointly enter into new contracting models with payers
Clinical Integration is a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Antitrust safe harbor that unites member physicians and hospitals in an interdependent system to improve the quality and cost efficiency of care through local direction and joint contracting with payers.
According to the FTC and the Department of Justice (DOJ), under Clinical Integration a group of independently practicing or employed physicians can come together to seek higher prices from the market for providing a better, more attractive, differentiated product
If you would like to learn more about Clinical Integration or to play an instrumental role in the development of a Clinically Integrated system in North Idaho please contact North Idaho Health Network at 208-666-3212.
