Independence Blue Cross and California-based DaVita HealthCare Partners, have formed a new entity called Tandigm Health.
Tandigm Health will partner with primary-care physicians in the Philadelphia area to provide enhanced resources to help doctors deliver more personalized quality care. The idea is to “move away from paying primary-care physicians for the number of services they provide and toward providing incentives for improving the quality of care they provide while also lowering costs,” said Dan Hilferty, president and CEO of Independence Blue Cross.
He praised HealthCare Partners for developing a system that “provides the best care at the right time at the right place.”
Tandigm Health will provide doctors with analytical tools and access to real-time data to help them manage patients with difficult chronic conditions such as diabetes, congestive heart failure and pulmonary disease.
Dr. Anthony Coletta will serve as president and CEO of the joint venture. He most recently served as a senior vice president at IBC. Prior to that, he was chief medical officer at Holy Redeemer Health System.
Coletta is a surgeon, and earlier in his career he helped found the Renaissance Medical Management Co. to give independent doctors more clout when contracting with managed-care companies. He said the time to change the country’s health-care delivery system is overdue.
“America spends more money on health care than any other industrialized country, and we are not healthier for it,” he said.
Dr. Craig E. Samitt, CEO of HealthCare Partners, said his company provides primary-care physician offices with technology and patient data, hands-on-support, and access to a network of providers outside the doctor’s office, to help doctors employ its care model.
Date: Apr 8, 2014