Over the last two weeks in separate meetings, the Boards of
Directors of WMHS, Meritus Medical Center in Hagerstown and Frederick Regional
Health System in Frederick, Maryland approved an alliance of these three
regional health systems in western Maryland.
On June 20, 2013, our consultants, the Berkley Research
Group, presented a lengthy report to board leadership from the three health
systems based on a several month study on a potential alliance of the
three. Their recommendation was to pursue a population health
initiative such as an Accountable Care Organization; create a Management Services
Organization to consolidate certain administrative services at the three health
systems and to establish a Regional Quality Initiative. The boards
used the summer to examine the report and to ensure that this potential
alliance was in the best interest of their respective health systems and their
communities.
With the rapid changes occurring in health care, the WMHS
Board engaged the services of Anirban Basu, a Maryland economist, to ascertain
whether bigger in health care is really better. Anirban did verify that
the Affordable Care Act encourages consolidation of hospitals to better handle
risk as well as to better contain the cost of care delivery. He,
along with many other experts in the field, said that small to medium sized
health systems would not be able to survive in the longer term. At
WMHS, we then created an internal steering committee to evaluate the potential
alliance. The group considered a variety of potential options for
consolidation and compared each to the proposed alliance and pre-established
criteria. At the end of this process, the committee recommended to
proceed with the WMHS, Meritus and Frederick alliance. The WMHS
Board approved the recommendation a week ago last Thursday.
With the decision to proceed being made, the hard work now
begins. From time to time, I will blog on the progress that we are
making, but it is a very exciting time for WMHS and our new alliance partners.
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