Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 30, 1994 TAG: 9409300053
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER NOTE: Below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The decision was made by Volvo's North Carolina office, which selected the only health-care network known in the area, Carilion Health System.
The Southwest Virginia Health Alliance announced on Thursday ought to keep that from happening again, said Christopher Dux, Pulaski Community's chief executive officer.
Pulaski Community and five other hospital-physician groups, representing an area from Salem to Bluefield, W.Va., are joining to negotiate for health-care business.
With the alliance, Dux said, he can sell a New River employer a network of health-care providers who can offer specialty treatments, including open-heart surgery, in a broad geographic area.
The alliance is a "collaborative group of providers saying enough is enough," said Karl Miller, president of Lewis-Gale Hospital in Salem and chairman of the alliance.
The members have "felt the presence of the free market," where the health-care providers who can offer the most at the lowest cost win, Miller said.
Miller said the alliance has the strength to compete with the likes of Carilion and become the preferred provider to managed-care health benefit programs that direct patients into a network.
Carilion, which has headquarters in Roanoke, owns or manages 14 not-for-profit hospitals in Southwest Virginia.
Preparations for the alliance began in June, Miller said, when each member hospital and a group of physicians in its community formed a physician-hospital organization. A PHO is a legal entity controlled by a hospital and members of its medical staff with authority to contract with managed-care payers and self-insured employers.
The newly formed physician-hospital groups then created the alliance, which represents 1,140 hospital beds and 310 physicians. Another 500 physicians are being invited to join, Miller said.
Alliance members are Lewis-Gale Hospital, Lewis-Gale Psychiatric Center and Lewis-Gale Clinic Inc., teamed as the Lewis-Gale Medical Center; Pulaski Health Plan, representing Pulaski Community Hospital; New River Health Care Plan Inc., representing Montgomery Regional Hospital; Clinch Valley Medical Center in Richlands, and St. Luke's Hospital and Medical Staff in Bluefield, W.Va.
The Pulaski and Montgomery hospitals are owned by Health Trust Inc. of Nashville; the other four are affiliated with Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp.
Long-term, members said, they hope to cooperate in areas such as billing; for now the alliance is a marketing and bargaining unit.
"Alliance members have joined forces to create a unified sales force which can decrease the price of health care in return for increased volume," Miller said.
The network can be expanded as needed to serve employers that have operations in several locations; already it has affiliation with the Southern West Virginia Alliance through St. Luke's Hospital, he said.
A Winston-Salem, N.C., consulting firm, Godwins, Booke, Dickenson, has been hired to review and negotiate the alliance's contracts with the various health maintenance organizations that are forming in the area.
An HMO is a specific network of providers that employees have access to through a primary care physician. It is considered the lowest-cost form of health care. At least four HMOs have announced plans to market benefit programs to Roanoke-area employers.
by CNB