A one-year-old accountable care organization established by Allina Hospitals & Clinic and payer HealthPartners has reported that it reduced medical cost by $6 million in 2010 and reduced the medical cost trend to 3 percent compared with 8 percent in 2009.
The ACO, called the Northwest Metro Alliance, launched last year and provides healthcare services for more than 27,000 people in the northwest suburbs of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. Its focus is on attaining the "triple aim" of health reform – improving the patient experience of healthcare, improving patient health and decreasing costs.
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"These results show the value of collaboration between health care organizations to create innovative models that can serve as an acccountable care organization, which are models of federal and state health care reform," said Penny Wheeler, chief clinical officer for Allina Hospitals & Clinics, in a press release announcing the first year results.
Patients in the ACO receive care at eight Allina and HealthPartners clinics and at Allina's Mercy Hospital in the coverage area. Specific initiatives of the first year sought to:
- Increase use of generic drugs
- Increase safe inductions of labor
- Prevent unnecessary use of the emergency department
- Coordinate care for patients with serious chronic disease
- Improve patient satisfaction
In order to achieve these goals, the ACO worked to improve health management in a number of ways.
First, was to improve the connections of a range of healthcare providers including doctors, nurses, hospitals and clinics in order to better manage the health of patients with complex medical conditions. It also sought to improve the use of electronic medical records in order for providers to have an easily accessible and more comprehensive view of a patient's history. Finally, using internally generated data it sought to provide actionable clinical data to providers about their own performance compared with their peers both locally and nationally.
The resulting reduction in medical cost trend from 8 percent in 2009 to 3 percent in 2010 accounted for the $6 million in medical cost savings. "We're demonstrating that this collaborative model is doing what it was designed to do in achieving Triple Aim results," said Brian Rank, MD, medical director of HealthPartners Medical Group.