Members take local action for the CommonHealth of California in their communities: Modesto, Fresno, and San Diego. Is Los Angeles next?
CHCC’s work to improve the quality and reduce the cost of healthcare in California can only work if it has grassroots support in the local communities in which our Members live and work.
Several local consumer groups have taken advantage of CHCC’s statewide and national leadership in this arena to actively engage local employers, providers, and health plan stakeholders to work together to improve what we call the “CommonHealth of California”: improving quality, managing diseases, lowering risks, and reducing costs.
For instance, Modesto purchasers engaged Doctors Medical Center in a Pay-for-Quality-Improvement ("PQI") initiative that reduced costs and improved quality. San Diego purchasers developed provider networks based on their quality of care and reduced their healthcare bill. Fresno purchasers have engaged with every major provider in their community and are now working towards joint initiatives to combat diabetes and obesity and to explore quality-improvement initiatives similar to Modesto’s PQI program.
CHCC’s analysis of the cost of complications of care in Los Angeles found that these adverse interactions impacted the lives of nearly 40,000 patients and their families in 2007 and cost their health plans more than $1.5 billion dollars |
CHCC is poised to launch a similar local purchaser group in the Los Angeles area: the CommonHealth of Los Angeles. We have met with the leadership of four major provider organizations that
represent 17 hospitals in the greater Los Angeles area, from the northern San Fernando Valley to Long Beach/Orange County and east to the San Gabriel Valley.
Improving quality of care often requires a significant investment by the hospital groups. Hospital revenues may also initially decline, since improved quality results in fewer complications and readmissions that would otherwise contribute to hospital revenue. Compensating participating hospitals for quality improvement is often best done by encouraging our membership to use those hospitals that have improved their outcomes. Therefore, as local consumers – including our Members – benefit from the higher quality of care and reduced costs that result from the reduction of complications and readmissions, our Members simultaneously support those hospitals that have taken the necessary steps to improve their outcomes. |
As demonstrated in other CHCC communities across the state, a well-coordinated purchasers’ initiative can focus local group efforts and maximize the effectiveness of these efforts. Therefore, we urge all our Members in the Los Angeles area to consider forming a local purchasing initiative, and with the assistance of CHCC, to begin engaging in meaningful negotiations with the hospital groups that have expressed initial interest in joining them to work together for the CommonHealth of Los Angeles.
If you are interested in participating in such an effort, please contact us.
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"We do need to reduce the rate of increase in health care costs - and a sufficient decrease will make a huge difference in the health care budget and cost burden for America. It will take quite a bit of political courage to get this job done. It will also take some targeted re-engineering of both care delivery and care financing. The alternative to courage and focused action is a continuation and probably a worsening of the status quo - and that is an outcome we really can't afford." 
"Employers and other private purchasers, for example, have been leaders in demanding better quality by pushing provider organizations to achieve new levels of excellence." 