HealthPartners: Spreading Care System Redesign Reforms Nationwide Could Save up to $2.4 Trillion over Next Decade

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HealthPartners released an analysis today showing that redesigning America’s healthcare delivery system to more reliably deliver more personalized and evidence-based healthcare could save up to $2.4 trillion in Medicare costs over the next decade, while improving health outcomes and patients’ experience.

“The need for much better performance in healthcare is well-understood, but how to achieve it is not”

The analysis comes in the wake of a recent announcement by national healthcare interest groups and President Obama that they would attempt to identify $2 trillion in cost savings over the next decade. Interest groups have offered general ideas about how to achieve the savings, which prompted HealthPartners to release an analysis of the savings it is actually achieving in its clinics and hospitals.

“This goes much deeper than a lobbyist’s promise,” said Mary Brainerd, Chief Executive Officer of Health Partners, the largest consumer governed non-profit healthcare organization in the nation. “This is reality. These are cost savings that we have already demonstrated in our clinics and hospital.”

Dartmouth Atlas researcher Elliott Fisher has found that if the entire nation adopted care similar to that in high value Medicare regions such as Minnesota, Medicare costs would decline by between 20 and 30 percent. At the same time, HealthPartners Medical Group’s costs are 8 percent lower than the Minnesota average, making them between 28 and 38 percent lower than the national average. Consequently, between $1.7 trillion and $2.4 trillion could be saved nationally over the next decade through care redesign like the HealthPartners approach.

“The need for much better performance in healthcare is well-understood, but how to achieve it is not,” said Don Berwick, president and CEO of the Institute for HealthCare Improvement. “IHI has challenged delivery systems to simultaneously improve the experience of care, health outcomes, patient satisfaction, community health status, and per capita costs. HealthPartners results are impressive. They demonstrate what’s possible, and they offer extraordinarily helpful lessons about how to replicate these results in other systems.”

For example, HealthPartners uses its electronic medical record and redesigned processes to prompt and support doctors, nurses and patients to take the steps most supported by medical research for each patient. As a result, over the last four years HealthPartners has seen an increase of 129 percent in the number of patients receiving optimal diabetes care and an increase of 48 percent of patients receiving optimal heart disease care. Likewise, more than 80 percent of patients due for mammograms have the potentially life-saving test. HealthPartners also provides “perfect” heart attack care 100 percent of the time for hospitalized patients.

HealthPartners “BestCare” also better coordinates care across sites, specialties, conditions and times. As a result of improved coordination of care between its clinics and hospital, emergency room visits have been reduced by 39 percent, hospital admissions have been reduced by 24 percent and hospital readmissions for frail elderly patients are 40 percent less than the community norm.

“If the rest of the nation achieved even half of what we have achieved through care system redesign, healthcare in America would be more effective and more affordable,” said Brian Rank, M.D., HealthPartners Medical Group medical director. “We can revolutionize care on a national basis, by simply doing the things that are already proven to work.”

HealthPartners points out that the patient experience has also improved as costs have decreased. For example, patients now have on-line scheduling, test results, consults with caregivers and post-visit coaching. Appointment waiting time was reduced by 350 percent over four years. HealthPartners has recently won a number of national awards for its high level of care and service and an overwhelming 98 percent of HealthPartners Medical Group patients say they would recommend it to others.

HealthPartners recommends that policymakers invest a relatively small portion of the savings achieved through healthcare redesign to support policies that further improve the effectiveness and affordability of care. For instance, HealthPartners recommends that policymakers modify Medicare fee for service payments to hospitals and physicians to reward outcomes, not units of care delivered; develop a national demonstration project with selected “Accountable Health Organizations,” and provide incentives for Medicare beneficiaries to receive care through these organizations. HealthPartners also recommends legislation that supports comparative effectiveness research for consumers.

“We are far from perfect and we need to push to improve and learn from our peers around the nation,” said Brainerd. “But we and other care providers already know that care system redesign can improve millions of lives and save trillions of dollars over time. Congress doesn’t have to rely on the lobbyists’ promises, because we’re already doing it.”

About HealthPartners

Founded in 1957, the HealthPartners (www.healthpartners.com) family of healthcare companies serves 1.25 million medical and dental health plan members nationwide. It is the largest consumer-governed, nonprofit healthcare organization in the nation, providing care, coverage, research and education to improve the health of members, patients and the community. For the fourth year in a row, HealthPartners is rated one of the best commercial health plans in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, NCQA’s “America’s Best Health Plans 2008”. HealthPartners was the recipient of the 2007 National Quality Forum Award and the 2006 American Medical Group Association Acclaim Award.