BREWER, Maine — Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems in 2007 declared a goal to become the best rural health care system in the country within five years.
With its 2012 fiscal year drawing to a close in September, the clock is winding down on that bold vision, EMHS President and CEO Michelle Hood said Wednesday at an annual meeting of the system’s corporators, a group of community members who provide oversight of the health organization. EMHS, the parent organization of Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and six other hospitals, has made tremendous progress in striving towards that goal, she said.
“We are absolutely operating within the national spotlight in many, many categories — in our quality initiatives, in our patient outreach initiatives, in our integration initiatives,” she said after the meeting.
Hood pointed to the system’s No. 78 ranking in a compilation of the top 100 integrated health care networks in the country by health technology firm IMS, which evaluates criteria including quality indicators, community outreach and financial performance.
Only nine other health systems on IMS’ top 100 list serve rural areas, placing EMHS within the top 10 rural health systems in the country, Hood said.
MaineHealth, parent organization to Maine Medical Center in Portland, placed 67th on the list.
Hood highlighted the $12.7 million federal Beacon Community Grant awarded to EMHS by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Now in its third year, the grant is designed to expand the use of health information technology and improve the coordination of care for people with chronic illness, such as diabetes and congestive heart failure.
Rates of hospital admissions, emergency department visits and uncontrolled diabetes have dropped among more than 1,100 patients participating in the Beacon community, Hood said.
EMHS also recently embarked on a pilot program to improve the quality, efficiency and cost of health care as an accountable care organization. EMHS is one of 32 hospital systems and physician groups in the country pioneering the model, which gives providers incentives to give better care at lower costs.
ACOs have gained momentum with the passage of the federal health reform law.
But the health care world will continue to move away from a broken system that pays doctors by the procedure or visit regardless of how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the federal law’s constitutionality, Hood said.
“I think everyone believes that the reform train has left the station,” she said. “We are on the way to forming a new health care delivery system for this country.”
The Supreme Court is expected to rule by late June.
In a vote before Wednesday’s meeting, the corporators, a 200-member group charged with providing community oversight of EMHS and its affiliates, unanimously endorsed a list of new and reappointed corporators and board members. The same slates were approved later Wednesday at a meeting of the EMHS board of directors.
I do believe that EMHS is the parent organization that includes 7 hospitals in all which would make the total to include 6 others along with EMMC and not just “five” as listed in the article’s second paragraph….
The member hospitals of EMHS are: Acadia Hospital, The Aroostook Medical Center, Blue Hill Memorial Hospital, Charles A Dean Memorial Hospital, Eastern Maine Medical Center, Inland Hospital, and Sebasticook Valley Health.
You are correct. EMHS serves as the foundation for more than
30 member organizations, of which seven hospitals are most prominent, several long-term care
facilities, a home health agency, air and ground emergency transport services,
a charitable foundation, and Affiliated Healthcare, which is parent of several
companies including Miller Drug.
No way. No. Not if you consider mental health an important part of health care. And most people do, Ms. Hood. Look at the recent history of Acadia Hospital and its all closed regional clinics under Ms. Hood’s stewardship.
I recently had a relative at Acadia. It is one screwed up hospital and they violated patient rights and guardian rights continually. They have gotten to big for their britches and they may think they will be ranking up with the top. They are heading into a concrete wall and they don’t see it. They are a ship of fools.
It was a temptation to attend the meeting of EMHS corporators and boards of directors yesterday. I wonder how informed these ‘community representatives’ are, about many things. …medical errors, hospital acquired infections, real and frequent staffing issues and other problems at EMHS affiliate hospitals. I wonder how EMHS and EMMC are in engaging actual patients and families in all levels of policy decisions. I also wonder how involved patients and families were in the recent decision to sell EMMC dialysis services to the huge for profit business, Davita. My assumption is that although the dialysis patients are the ones who will be most affected by this decision to sell, they were not considered or involved in any part of the decision. I hope that my perception of a large group of EMHS and EMMC board members and corporators all nodding their heads in awe and assent at everything Michelle Hood or Debby Cary Johnson says is not accurate. A real voice for patients is necessary in our community and every community. Until our Hospitals involve patients and families (especially those who have been harmed by their medical care) and until they give them a voice in healthcare, many issues (local, State and National) will remain unresolved. When I bring these things up at meetings, I hear from administrative level personnel and physicians that they are also healthcare consumers and they can speak for all of us. While it may be true that they are healthcare consumers, they are the insider Healthcare consumers with special knowledge and special treatment. It is the average Joe Healthcare consumer who has a voice, concerns, questions, and solutions for problems that must be heard when making healthcare policy decisions at EMHS, EMMC and all of their affiliates. Partnering with real every day healthcare consumers will give EMHS leadership an insight to solutions that they have never had.
I would like to see Michelle Hood or someone on the board of directors spend 6 hours in the hallway at the EMMC emergency department in need of assistance with no staff member coming to ask if you need anything. We had to go to the nurse’s station 3 times to request the pain medication that was ordered hours before for our family member. Once you see patients lining the hallways (which has been going on for months), you would realize EMMC does not care about patient care, dignity, or privacy but rather appearance and the bottom line. EMMC is a tertiary care center. They should act like it.
EMHS gets around that by claiming the the ER is operated by someone else. There is a reason it’s called Eastern Maine Wealth Care. Money first, patient last. My wife spent a few days in there and was glad to get out. She was lucky if she saw a nurse twice a day. The rest of the time it was CNAs. And 20 – 25 minutes for someone to answer the call button isn’t right. Even one of my wife’s patient rights was violated and they could care less. Glad we have St. Joe’s. I wish more doctors would practice so we don’t have to keep going to Portland for minor surgeries.
What is the alternative to paying doctors by procedure or visit?
Think of it as being paid for keeping people well as opposed to only diagnosing and treating their illnesses. For example, a traditional primary care practice focuses on diagnosing and treating patients when they are in the office and often when they are already sick or diagnised with chronic disease. They are paid for the volume of resources used (physician time, the number of tests, procedures, etc.). Patient centered medical homes shift the focus to the patient’s total needs – including the coordination of preventive activities like nutrition counseling, fitness, or smoking cessation. Nurse care managers continuously monitor their patients with chronic disease to be sure they understand instructions and are following them, and they are able to recognize early warning signs and intervene before the patient is in crisis – keeping them out of emergency departments. While originally funded through grants, the concept behind “accountable care” is that providers will soon be paid for the value of their overall care plan, which is what helps maintain a patient’s good health … think of it as pay for performance.
EMHS and several area partners have been working under this model through the Bangor Beacon Community, a three year pilot program now in its final year. If you want to learn more about how it works, and meet some people who have had success with this model of care go to http://www.bangorbeaconcommunity.org/dynamic.aspx?id=96877 and watch some of the short patient videos. It’s a good example of some of what’s right with healthcare today.
Beacon Community is one glowing example of patient and family engagement..in their own care, and their health. It should be the example for all local practices and for all patients.
The real problem is the low pay for EMHS’ top administrators. Where their nurses, much less their other non-physician employees deserve their salaries of well under $40,000 a year–roughly equivalent to the many UMaine System employees beholden to the Chair of the System Board of Trustees, none other than Michele Hood–those at the top are woefully underpaid even with their salaries of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
What’s an ACO?
ACO stands for accountable care organization. ACOs are
designed to create better partnerships between hospitals and physicians to
improve the coordination, efficiency, cost, and quality of patient care. With
an ACO the structure of care delivery shifts from how much a
healthcare provider does to how well the patient does. This
also determines how hospitals and doctors are paid for the care they provide.
EMHS is participating in the Pioneer Medicare ACO Pilot http://innovations.cms.gov/initiatives/aco/pioneer/