Two hospital systems are preparing to join forces and create what will be Illinois’ largest integrated health system, in a merger that will serve as a test of the goals of health reform and the health IT.
Advocate Health Care and NorthShore University HealthSystem are going to combine into Advocate NorthShore Health Partners, a 16 hospital system that will span northern Illinois and greater Chicago. Advocate is already Illinois’ largest system with 11 hospitals, and the new network will be the nation’s 11th largest not-for-profit system, serving 3 million patients a year.
The new system is a big bet on integrated healthcare and it will hedge against the future of reform, to sustain two organizations through financing and regulatory changes and evolve to meet patient expectations. And with numerous locations, thousands of physicians and four major electronic health record systems between them, the new health system will be a large case study in IT interoperability and the pursuit of population health.
“We see the world through the same lens,” said Jim Skogsbergh, president and CEO of Advocate, who will serve as co-CEO of the new organization. “In addition to an outstanding leadership team, medical group and strong reputation for quality, NorthShore is a pioneer in developing a tightly integrated system — advancing alignment with physicians and hospitals.”
“This agreement brings together the best of our two health systems: quality, safety and clinical integration supported by translational research and technology advancements,” said Mark Neaman, president and CEO of NorthShore. “Advocate leads the way in their proven approach to population health."
Advocate board chair Michele Richardson added that "economies of scale will allow us to reduce the trend of rising healthcare costs."
Indeed, information technology leaders at the two organizations are doubtless going to get to work soon crafting an integration strategy to make sure that clinicians and support staff will be able to work together digitally.
NorthShore, a teaching affiliate of the University of Chicago’s medical school, uses only Epic Systems EHR, while Advocate Health Care uses Cerner for inpatient hospitals, Allscripts for its Advocate Medical Group and eClinicalWorks for its Advocate Physician Partners.
The initial work of digitization is largely complete at the health systems — now comes the task of connecting the information systems and optimizing them for clinicians and patients.
NorthShore first introduced an EHR in 2003 to connect its four hospitals and numerous employed and affiliated physicians, and later became the first health system to connect hospitals and physician offices with one database, according to HIMSS Davies Committee.
All of Advocate’s primary care providers use an EHR and almost 90 percent of them have received incentive payment under the federal Meaningful Use program, the health system’s annual report noted.
Advocate Physician Partners uses a customized EHR that transfers data from the physician practice EMR to a disease registry system and clinical quality metrics are reported through standardized, physician-developed care management template — all with the goal of having a platform for accountable care and population health, the organization said.
Advocate has been trying to move toward value-based payment models for several years and now has about half of its revenue in fee-for-value shared savings ACO contracts, with 25 percent in fee-for-service, 15 percent in global risk and 5 percent in partial risk, according to its annual report.
The merger is expected to be finalized in 2015; it’s still subject to multiple regulatory approvals from the Federal Trade Commission, the state of Illinois and the United Church of Christ, with which Advocate is affiliated.
