The largest health system in Northern Kentucky and one of the biggest in Greater Cincinnati announced Thursday they have launched a joint effort to lower costs for patients and employers. They also plan to expand into the insurance business.
A key component will be sharing the electronic medical records of patients treated by St. Elizabeth Healthcare of Northern Kentucky and TriHealth of Greater Cincinnati. Developing a system to do so is expected to be complex and expensive, but greater access to such records could help doctors and nurses on both sides of the Ohio River improve patient care and convenience as well as reduce costly inefficiencies such as duplicative testing and medical procedures.
St. Elizabeth CEO John Dubis and TriHealth CEO John Prout met with me at the TriHealth corporate headquarters in Cincinnati to outline their plans for the collaboration. They both are in charge of what has been dubbed the Healthcare Solutions Network.
Each CEO stressed that this isn’t a merger. They will remain competitors and maintain separate hospitals, medical office buildings and employees.
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“I think we have an opportunity to do something really special for Greater Cincinnati by ensuring there’s a network of superlative providers and a network of physicians who can deal with a population base of this size without worrying about the boundaries of state lines or rivers,” Dubis said.
“We’re looking to develop a lot of solutions,” Prout said. The collaboration “gives us an opportunity to be innovative and creative and provide value.”
Each health system expects to benefit, in part, because business leaders might be more inclined to contract with TriHealth and St. Elizabeth Healthcare to provide services through employee health care plans.
Date: Dec 5, 2013