Care Coordination Opportunities for Networks

Carolyn Bruce, Executive Director, Western Healthcare Alliance

Tim Cox, President, Northland Health Alliance

Pat Schou, Executive Director, Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network

Care Coordination Opportunities for Health Networks (Carolyn Bruce and Pat Schou)
Colorado and Illinois networks will share their recent experiences with the development of care coordination organizations for their hospital memberships. Speakers will discuss reasons why their members asked them to pursue this new care model as an option for primarily independent facilities and its potential for rural facilities to pool resources, maintain local access to health care and ultimately preserve their market share and viability. Speakers will share how they plan to establish the rural hospital primary care base that not only integrates locally but also with other health care organizations and regional hospital systems.

Care Coordination is Coming (Tim Cox)
Using funding from the CMS Innovation Center, Northland is building a Care Coordination Service that will become the building block for the development of an Integrated Delivery Network.

As healthcare organizations are trying to figure out the future of healthcare and the need to develop Accountable Care Organizations learning to effectively manage and coordinate care can be a valuable service to be provided by networks. The presentation will cover the benefits of Care Coordination for Rural Networks. How to structure the operations, what the business plan looks like and how to sustain the service over time. The discussion will include how Care Coordination fits into an Integrated Delivery Network and why this is a valuable service for your members.

Materials
Presentation (ppt)

Presenters

Carolyn Bruce has been CEO of Western Healthcare Alliance since 1997. During her tenure, she led WHA from being an in-the-red struggling start up to a multi-million dollar successful health network with over 20 programs, 80 employees and 25 full members.

Tim Cox serves as President of Northland Health Alliance, a rural health alliance located in North Dakota. The alliance is a coalition includes 20 healthcare facilities (one tertiary medical center, 12 critical access hospitals, and seven long-term care facilities) working together to strengthen available resources and capacity to deliver value-based healthcare in today’s competitive market. Tim has been able to secure over $12 million for members and network programs thought grants and development. Included in those grant dollars are a CAP project, a Community Health Center start up, a PACE program and other diverse community healthcare development initiatives. The alliance is involved in a wide range of services for its members including account collection, a natural gas purchasing cooperative, biomedical repair services, equipment maintenance, mobile imaging, education, medical records services, grant writing and development and as discussed the operation of a PACE program. Northland PACE was one of the 14 sites that received a CORE grant to introduce PACE into rural communities.

Over the past 25 years, Tim has been engaged in many healthcare networking activities, including the startup and on-going development of two major healthcare networks in different regions of the country. Tim was involved in the development of the National Cooperative of Health Networks as a charter member and as past president and was also chair of Communities Joined in Action (CJA) and has served on the board of the National PACE Association for the past four years. He is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives and has served as Regent for North Dakota. Tim has served as a member of the NPA Board of Directors and is Treasurer. His is chair of the NPA Finance Committee. Tim graduated from Brigham Young University with a BA degree in communications and received an Executive MBA from the University of Utah.

Pat Schou is the executive director of the Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network (ICAHN), the first state-wide critical access hospital (CAH) network established in 2003 comprised of 52 CAHs providing a number of hospital support services and educational programs as well as managing the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Grant, Small Hospital Improvement Program and several other grant programs on behalf of the Illinois Department of Public Health. Prior to this, Schou was the state CAH program coordinator since the program inception in 1999 and instrumental in Illinois being one recognized as of the most successful state CAH programs. Schou has over 35 years of clinical and rural hospital administrative experience, where her last hospital position was as the Vice President for Perry Memorial Hospital, Princeton, IL for 10 years. She holds a Bachelor’s in Nursing from Illinois Wesleyan University and a Masters of Science from Northern Illinois University. Schou was awarded Top 25 Women in Leadership for Peoria, IL in 2013..

Schou is a past president of the Illinois Rural Health Association and the 2002 State Rural Health Worker of the Year. She is actively involved in the National Rural Health Association and serves on its CAH Advisory Committee, Rural Congress, and Rural Health Quality Workgroup and is the chair of the advisory committee for the National Rural Technical Assistance Center for the CAH program on behalf of the federal office of Rural Health Policy. She serves on the executive board of two statewide broadband corporations, the Illinois Rural Healthnet and Partnership for Connected Illinois. She recently was appointed to the State Health Improvement Plan Implementation Coordinating Council serving as its co-chair and recently appointed to the Board of the Accreditation Association for Hospital/Health Systems. She was recently awarded the Calico Rural Leadership Award by the National Rural Research Center. Schou is a fellow member of the American College of Healthcare Executives.