As the debate on health care reform heats up, innovations at eastern Pennsylvania’s
Geisinger Health System have put the Danville-based system in the national media eye. Recent successes like launching retail health clinics in local supermarkets, a 90-day "warranty" on elective heart surgery, electronic record-keeping that gives patients access to records and health information, and reducing re-admittance of Medicare patients have put Geisinger in headlines at CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" and "Frontline" on PBS.
With two medical centers, two research centers, 40 community practice sites, and 13,000 employees, Geisinger serves 2.6 million patients a year. Its non-profit health plan covers 212,000 members. President Obama cited Geisinger’s effective practices in a June 11 speech on his health care reform goals in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
"We have to ask why places like the Geisinger Health system in rural Pennsylvania, Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City, or communities like Green Bay can offer high-quality care at costs well below average, but other places in America can't. We need to identify the best practices across the country, learn from the success, and replicate that success elsewhere," he said.
The success stories aren’t news to the folks at Geisinger. "We’ve been working on these issues for three-plus years, and getting media coverage for a couple of years," says spokesperson Patti Urosevich, "but the immediate coverage was because the president mentioned us." Geisinger hosted a national conference on its ProvenCare system in December attended by 100 national providers. ProvenCare tracks thousands of procedures in specific fields to adjust and improve patient outcomes. Patients spend fewer days in intensive care and recover faster, with procedural success rates than exceed the national average.
Source: Patti UrosevichWriter: Chris O’Toole