Via Christi Healthier You Alliance in Accountable Care has signed an agreement with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas, the state’s largest health insurer. The goals of the agreement are to improve population health and create better experiences for the health plan’s Wichita-area members, while lowering the overall cost of healthcare.
The agreement began Jan. 1, and includes an annual shared savings payment if Via Christi achieves quality measures and budgeted costs. In the latter years of the agreement, Via Christi also will assume some financial risk. The payment model does not replace the traditional fee-for-service approach to reimbursement but adds extra incentives to improve population health and member experiences while reducing overall healthcare costs over time.
Via Christi, an Ascension ministry and the largest healthcare provider in Kansas, together with its community physician partners, is focused on improving the quality of healthcare through a team approach, seamlessly connecting all services for patients.
Via Christi's Healthier You Alliance in Accountable Care has been in place for three years and includes 660 Via Christi and community providers. Also under the umbrella of Via Christi’s Healthier You Alliance is a Medicare Shared Savings Program, which provides care to an estimated 21,700 Kansas Medicare beneficiaries in Wichita, Manhattan and Wamego, and a plan that covers approximately 16,000 Via Christi associates and their dependents. With the addition of the Blue Cross agreement, Via Christi now has nearly 68,000 covered lives in value-based agreements.
"We continue our work building a high-performance, clinically integrated system of care committed to providing patients with the high-quality, clinician-led, coordinated care they need in the most appropriate clinical setting," said Ed Hett, MD, the Via Christi primary care provider who serves as the Chief Executive Officer for the Healthier You Alliance. "It’s well documented that this results in better patient outcomes and experiences and lower overall healthcare costs."
A key element in Via Christi’s transition to population health improvement is the patient-centered medical home, or PCMH, model of care it has pilot-tested during the past several years at Via Christi Clinic locations in Newton and west Wichita.
"Our physician-led care teams in the PCMH model lowered the annual cost of care for their patients by nearly 12 percent, decreased their patients’ avoidable emergency room visits by more than 31 percent and reduced inpatient hospital costs by about 17 percent," Dr. Hett said. "Our goal is to use this learning to help patients stay healthy or better manage any conditions they may already have using a similar care model that has already been employed successfully with our own associates and with Medicare enrollees."
Photo caption:
Ed Hett, MD, Chief Executive Officer of Via Christi Healthier You Alliance in Accountable Care, works with team member Pam Cooper on Via Christi’s patient-centered medical home program, one of several population health initiatives designed to better coordinate care.
