A message from Dr. Austin Bailey
Welcome to the first issue of Provider Insider. Our goal is to share information about Coordinated Care that will benefit you, your practice and your patients.
Perhaps the most important message for the inaugural issue is to reinforce “why” Coordinated Care and “why now.” The simple answer is to improve population health in our communities and drive down costs in the process. But there’s a little more driving this need, and it’s helpful if we’re all aware and united as we move forward.
There are two fundamental forces driving this paradigm shift toward integrated networks:
• A shift from local to regional, if not national, presence for many employers.
• High-performing health care delivery is more critical than ever before.
Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the business owner for a minute. As more and more businesses consolidate, their geographical footprints get larger, and they need access to larger health care networks. For example, King Soopers and City Market are located throughout Colorado, yet they are owned by The Kroger Co., the nation’s largest supermarket chain, which purchases its health insurance at a national level.
Regional and national employers expect and need access to a network of providers that can cover all their employees, regardless of where they live. As an industry, health care is moving rapidly away from patients choosing a practice or a hospital based on one locale and quickly toward offering a list of providers or hospitals across a wide area. It makes sense: The broader the network, the more value to the employer.
In addition to desiring a broad network, employers continuously look for ways to reduce health care costs. They want to partner with networks that offer extensive reach while also illustrating an ability to improve health care outcomes and decrease costs at the same time. As a clinically integrated network, we exist to do both—improve care and reduce costs.
One final point I’d like to stress: The most important word in the previous sentence is “we.”
Coordinated Care is a united effort driven by individual providers. This is your network. Collectively, we are developing best practices—and sharing those best practices—so we can discover better ways to deliver quality care at affordable costs.
I can’t express this enough. We are in this together, and we will succeed in improving population health through everyone’s ideas and contributions.
I look forward to working by your side as we move forward in this new era of health care.
Austin Bailey, MD
Medical Director, Population Health, UCHealth