Three big U.S. health care systems, including San Francisco’s Dignity Health and giant health insurer UnitedHealthcare, have joined forces to monitor the effectiveness of devices such as stents, pacemakers, heart valves and hip implants.
The new venture, dubbed SharedClarity, includes Dignity, the Dallas-based Baylor Health Care System, and Illinois-based Advocate Health Care, along with Minneapolis-based UnitedHealthcare, part of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH).
Together, the three hospital and health care systems employ 100,000 people in more than 850 locations. UnitedHealthcare provides benefits to 40 million Americans.
Phoenix-based SharedClarity plans to add new members in coming months, officials said. It plans to identify and study the best-performing implantable medical devices in various categories, including stents, defibrillators, pacemakers, knee and hip implants, and heart valves.
It will use the results to select the best devices and negotiate “affordable purchasing agreements” with device manufacturers. The heft of the members of SharedClarity should help it get good deals in those talks.
Officials said U.S. hospitals now spend more than $30 billion annually on the 30 most commonly used medical devices. With Obamacare cutting reimbursement to hospitals under Medicare and Medicaid, and other fiscal pressures mounting, systems such as Dignity, Baylor, Advocate and others face extreme pressure to cut costs while maintaining or improving the quality of care.
Studies done by the group will be overseen by physicians from each of the participating health systems, using data from member hospitals and claims information from United Healthcare. The studies will not be funded by manufacturers, which has often been the case in earlier efforts to compare options.
UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Labs and the Lewin Group consulting firm will work with SharedClarity on research and related activities.
“We have a responsibility as providers and insurers to deliver the highest-quality, most affordable care possible,” Richard Roth, Dignity Health’s vice president of strategic innovation, said in the group’s April 9 statement. He called SharedClarity a platform that will give doctors, hospitals and insurers the information needed “to make evidence-based decisions about the care we are providing.”
Mark West, president of the new venture, was previously UnitedHealthcare’s vice president of supply chain management.
Lloyd Dean is CEO of Dignity Health, which operates 40 hospitals in California, Arizona and Nevada, including St. Mary’s Medical Center and Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco and Redwood City’s Sequoia Hospital.