December 04, 2013

John Dubis (left), president and CEO of St. Elizabeth Healthcare, and John Prout, president and CEO of TriHealth, announce a new joint venture between our systems.

TriHealth and St. Elizabeth Healthcare have signed a letter of intent to establish a collaborative venture called Healthcare Solutions Network. This will enable us to more quickly achieve our goals of better health, better patient experience and lower costs.

Healthcare Solutions Network will be a unique regional health organization that brings together the physicians and hospitals from both of our nationally recognized health systems. It will also partner with employers and payers to provide superior clinical outcomes, manage the total cost of care and create a clinically integrated network of the region's best physicians and hospitals working together. 

This collaboration is not a merger. TriHealth and St. Elizabeth will continue to operate our own facilities and maintain our own management and governing boards. Healthcare Solutions Network is jointly owned by TriHealth and St. Elizabeth to house new capabilities and support services that will be needed for the rapidly emerging changes in healthcare.

While remaining independent organizations, we believe this is the kind of innovative teamwork that will benefit the community because it will allow us to do things better together than either of our organizations could do as well alone. Healthcare Solutions Network's first-year priorities include:

• Managed care products: Introducing a new Medicare Advantage product to the market for this exclusive network. Providing a select network for health plans, which will offer a cost efficient, high-quality alternative to broad network Preferred Provider Organization health insurance products.
• Population health management: Developing a program to help manage the health of large patient groups through a single clinical network that offers additional value for patients. 
• Integrated network: Creating a single network to enable employed physicians, independent physicians and hospitals to align to improve quality and outcomes under a common infrastructure.
• Clinical services: Coordinating select services to facilitate adoption of best practices, improve quality access at patient and population levels, and provide more efficient use of healthcare resources.  

We are still determining whether Healthcare Solutions Network will result in new jobs, or whether existing staff of the two health systems will fill all positions. However, most team members will see no change in responsibilities.

Our systems' services are highly complementary, and this collaboration will make it easier for our physicians, patients, employers and insurers to access one, high-quality, value-oriented and efficient source for health services and solutions across the region.

TriHealth and St. Elizabeth have a long history of working together. Earlier this year, our two organizations participated in a narrow network insurance plan through Humana called Total Care, which offers reduced team member and employer premiums.

In addition, St. Elizabeth and TriHealth are working together to coordinate support services for the $60 million Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative (CPCi) pilot awarded to our region last year by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Services. The health care systems together account for nearly half of the region's CPCi practices, which are studying innovations in primary care delivery and payment models.