NAPERVILLE, IL – Two suburban Chicago healthcare providers are developing what they call a “ground-breaking” joint venture to improve quality care in the region.
The DuPage Medical Group and Edward Hospital have created a new entity – called Illinois Health Partners – to jointly manage the care of nearly 100,000 HMO patients in the western and southwestern Chicago suburbs.
The partnership extends beyond HMO patients, representatives of the two providers say, as Illinois Health Partners will also develop clinical initiatives intended to help control costs and improve patient experience throughout the region.
“The joint venture is a community-based solution to the challenges of continuing to improve the quality of healthcare in this region,” said Pam Davis, president and CEO of Edward Hospital & Health Services, based in Naperville, Ill. She said the partnership would deliver “seamlessly coordinated care” for residents of the region because the group’s physicians practice in the hospital’s catchment area.
DMG, a 320-physician group based in Downers Grove, Ill., and Edward serve a region that consists of 1.7 million Illinois residents across four counties. DMG is one of the largest physician-owned multi-specialty groups in the Midwest, and Edward is the eighth largest hospital in the Chicago area based on patient revenue. Edward had revenue of almost $532 million for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009.
Mike Kasper, DMG’s CEO, said DMG and Edward would remain independent. He said DMG chose to establish a joint venture with Edward because of its “long history” of partnering with physicians.
“This relationship will be focused on improving quality, efficiency and access to care for our patients – with physicians driving the process,” Kasper said.
In the coming months, DMG and Edward plan to finalize details on the structure of Illinois Health Partners. Davis and Kasper will co-chair the eight-member IHP board, with each organization naming four members to the board.
Davis said the alliance between Edward and DMG would focus on establishing best care practices across all clinical settings and collaborating to boost the efficiency of care delivery. The organizations intend to measure and track improvements using quality and outcomes data.
“The physicians involved in this collaboration will collect and share specific quality performance measures for each physician – primary care and specialists,” she said. “That will result in concrete improvement of that performance leading directly to better, more consistent patient care.”
She said working with DMG would enable Edward Hospital to achieve higher quality and greater cost-effectiveness than the organization could accomplish on its own.
Joint ventures like the DMG-Edward arrangement could be a growing trend, according to recent research by PricewaterhouseCooper’s Health Research Institute. The firm has been examining how hospitals and doctors can become successful collaborators.
Warren Skea, a director of PwC’s Health Research Institute advisory team, says hospitals and physicians need to be true collaborators in order for alignment to work.
A co-management structure is “a great starting point,” he said. “It builds trust. It sets that governance. It gets physicians and hospitals working together, understanding each other’s issues, strategically pulling in the same direction.”
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