EVERETT — Providing high-quality health care while saving money may seem like a medical mission impossible.
Yet Everett is receiving national attention for doing just that — one of 10 communities nationally where medical quality gets high marks while costs are kept comparatively low.
Those communities were singled out by The Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, Mass., and Dartmouth University, which has a long-term project of monitoring variations in medical costs.
Representatives from The Everett Clinic, Providence Regional Medical Center Everett and the Mountlake Terrace-based insurance company Premera Blue Cross were invited to Washington, D.C., in July, joining peers from nine other communities, to explain how they do it.
Other invitations went to medical representatives from Sacramento, Calif.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Portland, Maine; Ashville, N.C.; Sayre, Pa.; Temple, Texas; Richmond, Va.; La Crosse, Wis.; and Tallahassee, Fla.
Since the conference, several national media outlets have discussed the efforts of Everett-area health care organization to provide quality care.
“While the whole country is trying to figure out how to organize and design health care that makes sense, we’ve got a lot of it figured out — not all of it — but a lot of it,” said Dave Brooks, Providence’s chief executive.
Among the keys to this success is that physicians are given more say-so in how health care is delivered at the hospital, he said.
One example of the results: A local physician, Dr. Jim Brevig, championed a program at Everett’s hospital that was launched in 2003, Brooks said.
Rather than shuffling cardiac patients from critical care to recovery units as their conditions improve one or two days after surgery, patients stay in the same room. “We change how we deliver care versus moving a patient around the hospital,” Brooks said.
The national analysis that designated high-quality, low-cost medical care was based in part on the charges for caring for Medicare patients from 1992 to 2004, said Rick Cooper, chief executive of The Everett Clinic.
The study looked at medical care provided both in clinics and hospitals, he said.
One effort to stem costs and provide good care dates back about 15 years, initiated when Premera worked with his organization to help lower pharmacy costs, he said.
“We wouldn’t have been able to do that alone,” Cooper said. “We didn’t have the information.”
As one example, by including generic drugs for treatment of acid reflux, it saved about $15 per prescription.
With these and other cost-saving steps now spread among all its 250,000 patients, the organization saves an estimated $30 million to $35 million a year.
“This started out as collaboration between Premera and extended to other insurers and patients,” Cooper said.
Although Cooper said he is proud of the efforts that his and other area organizations have made on the quality and cost-reduction efforts, “we can do a much better job,” he said. “That’s what we’re focused on — improving.”
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486, salyer@heraldnet.com.
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