Integration of Care

Uniting Around You

Patient-Centered Care Integration Makes UH Better as It Grows Bigger

At a time of urgent national need for leadership in health care reform, University Hospitals is standing up to provide it through innovative models of caregiving built around patients’ needs.

UH is making health care safer, more effective and more convenient by unifying our providers and facilities around a shared goal: providing the right care, in the right place, at the right time.

Increasingly, the right place is right near home. We have expanded our network of hospitals, outpatient facilities and physicians across 15 Northeast Ohio counties. Our providers are in our patients’ communities. At the same time, they are integrated more tightly than ever through a common culture and advanced technology.

The UH Seidman Cancer Center and our seven clinical-care institutes are examples of this integration. They bring UH Case Medical Center’s highly specialized expertise and treatment protocols to patients and providers at UH community hospitals, health centers and affiliates across the region.

And our three Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are exciting and innovative models for this era of quality-focused, coordinated care. We launched our first, the UH ACO, in 2010 for the 24,000 UH employees and dependents who receive their health benefits through UH. In 2012, we launched two more. Our Medicare 2ACO, called UH Coordinated Care Organization, will serve 42,000 Medicare beneficiaries. Rainbow Care Connection will serve 68,000 children with the help of an unprecedented $12.7 million federal innovation grant. Together, these ACOs are unique in encompassing patients throughout all stages of life.

We built our ACOs on patient-provider relationships rather than responses. Instead of providing episodic care, ACOs foster long-term patient-provider engagement. Case managers and provider liaisons help patients, primary-care providers and specialists collaborate as an integrated team to help patients stay healthy and manage illnesses effectively.

An enticing side effect: cost control. According to a report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 5 percent of American patients account for almost 50 percent of health care spending – an annual average outlay of $36,000 each. ACOs aim to empower patients – especially those with complex conditions – with proactive outreach and ongoing support, to help them stay well and to coordinate their care throughout their treatment.

UHCare, our secure electronic medical record, also provides coordination. It ties UH providers together with comprehensive access to patient records and the latest evidence-based care guidance.

The result of all this coordination: Assurance to every patient, at every age, that when they need us most, UH will provide consistent care of the highest quality and safety – from Sandusky to Streetsboro and from Mentor to Medina.

That’s integration. That’s UH.