Highmark will collaborate with Lancaster General Health to try to keep patients healthier and save money in the process.
It’s yet another example of the rapidly-expanding concept of “accountable care” being used to shift emphasis toward keeping patients healthy, and away from treating them only when they are sick.
Highmark said the arrangement will cover 27,000 people who are customers of Highmark’s regular health insurance plans, or a Highmark Medicare Advantage plan, and who use Lancaster General doctors. Highmark says it will eventually include patients who use non-Lancaster General doctors.
It will rely on Lancaster General’s existing “accountable care organization,” or ACO.
ACOs, which are encouraged by the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, involve using teams of health care providers, medical data, and new levels of coordination among the various health care providers to keep patients healthier. When health care providers keep patients healthy, and thereby reduce health care expenses, they can share in the savings.
In the Harrisburg region, many of the major health care providers are involved in accountable care. PinnacleHealth, for example, operates an accountable care organization called River Health, in which it partnered with health systems and physician practices throughout the Harrisburg area and as far north as the Williamsport area.
Date: April 8, 2015