UCHealth and Intermountain Healthcare are joining forces to save Coloradans money on healthcare.
Announced earlier this month, the two healthcare providers are working together to develop a clinically integrated network, or CIN. The CIN will bring together 700 primary care physicians and hundreds of clinics and hospitals across the state.
“... their goal is to help improve quality and outcomes, thus reducing health care costs,” UCHealth Vice President of Communications Dan Weaver said via email.
Those improvements to quality can already be seen in the work done by UCHealth’s CIN. Over the past year, UCHealth has helped complete 18,000 mammograms — which saved an estimated 125 patients from dying of breast cancer — 7,000 completed colonoscopies — saving an estimated 164 patients from dying of colorectal cancer — and more than 36,000 diabetic patient visits, according to Weaver.
“These specific successes are helping improve the care and outcomes for our patients, reduce hospital readmissions and unnecessary emergency department visits, and reduce overall health care expenses. Importantly – a primary care doc can’t do all of this herself or himself, and a hospital cannot do all of this either. The coordination that the CIN provides is essential to pulling all of this together, reducing health care costs, and enabling everyone to participate in value-based contracts with payers,” Weaver said.
The partnership will also offer health insurance through SelectHealth — which is run through the health plans division at Intermountain Healthcare. SelectHealth has more than 1 million members in Utah, Idaho and Nevada, according to a news release from UCHealth.
The health insurance plan will provide Medicare Advantage and Individual ACA, or Affordable Care Act, plans, pending regulatory approval, as soon as January 2024.
According to Weaver, the SelectHealth insurance plans are anticipated to have a low medical loss ratio which “means less of patients’ premiums are going to overhead costs.”
“The CIN will treat SelectHealth just like all payers here. Any plan that aligns with the CIN’s goals of ensuring a better patient experience and health outcomes while lowering costs will be considered a valuable partner,” said Mark Korth, Intermountain Healthcare’s regional president. “UCHealth and Intermountain look forward to the next evolution to our value-based care approach.”
While the partnership is expected to expand the networks of the two healthcare providers further statewide, the two organizations will continue to remain individual and independent companies, honoring their current contracts and relationships with insurance plans, the news release states.
