Marquette General Hospital and Bell Hospital in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula have agreed to create an Accountable Care Organization, to be called Superior Health Partners.
Marquette General is a 315-bed specialty care hospital and Level II Trauma Center in Marquette. Bell Hospital is a 69-bed community hospital in Ishpeming. The new partnership will employee more than 3,000 people at the hospitals and affiliated facilities.
The formal affiliation between the two hospitals went into effect July 1. The legal documents forming the affiliation were signed at the SHP board’s first official meeting, during which board officers were elected and strategic plan priorities were formally established.
“With the legal documents signed, our new board officers in place and our strategic plan outlined, we can move forward with plans to create an Accountable Care Organization, which relies on close hospital partnerships, collaborative alignment with physicians, robust information technology infrastructure and operational expense management,” said Tim Larson, Marquette General Health System’s board chairman and the newly elected SHP board chairman.
Rick Ament, Bell Hospital's president and CEO, said that while the federal government’s final verdict on healthcare reform is still unknown, the healthcare industry is moving toward the Accountable Care Organization model.
This model, he said, relies on partnerships between healthcare providers to reduce healthcare costs while maintaining or improving quality of care. Successful ACOs will be rewarded financially, providing additional resources to invest in technology, jobs and other improvements in the delivery of care.
“It’s the goal of SHP to build an Accountable Care Organization that can serve the entire Upper Peninsula,” said Gary Muller, the newly appointed CEO of SHP. “The partnership between Marquette General and Bell, and the potential for other hospitals to join SHP, puts our region way ahead of the curve both from a statewide and national perspective. It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of our planning on improving regional healthcare quality and access.”
Muller said the key to initial SHP success would be physician recruitment.
“By enhancing physician recruitment efforts, the number of services and specialties available will be greatly increased, and patients will have access to more services in the Upper Peninsula,” he said.