By Dean Gruner, MD
You may have heard that ThedaCare is part of a new network of healthcare systems that span the state. When we recently announced this new partnership we got a lot of positive response – and a few questions. Why are you working with competitors? Who benefits from such a broad geographic reach? Does this change anything for ThedaCare’s patients?
I’m happy to talk about this, because it allows me to describe ThedaCare’s focus on value. In this first of many columns I hope to share with you, it makes sense to talk about one of the underlying principles that guides us at ThedaCare.
You hear us talk a lot about value – how we work to get rid of waste as we deliver care, how we aim to provide the right care and treatment, how we incorporate patient feedback and input into our work, how we innovate to move toward payment based on quality instead of volume – and more.
We ask the question: does what we do add value to our patients, our communities, our businesses? We look to add value in many ways, but we always look for ways that benefit the people we care for and our communities as a whole, as well as the people who pay the bills.
Our partners in the new statewide network – Aspirus, Aurora Health Care, Bellin Health, Gundersen Health System and UW Health – tend to think like we do. We’re all focused on value, we’re all willing to collaborate. We’re committed to our local communities. We didn’t merge, nothing is changing for our patients.
What changed is that we gained a new awareness of the evolving needs of the employers and insurers we work with in our local communities – needs for a broader geographic reach. Our partnership creates an opportunity for employers with a statewide workforce to confidently access quality care no matter where their workers live. As high performing local healthcare providers linked across the state, we can share best practices, coordinate resources and spur one another on toward even better value. Employers and employees come out ahead.
Sure, we compete sometimes, but we collaborate, too. Sometimes we do a bit of both. The trick is to know when to do what. Sometimes the community is better served when we compete, like in primary care, where we know that our community values choice. That’s an opportunity for healthy competition.
Sometimes, the community is better served when we collaborate, like when we partner across the state to provide better coverage, or when we partner locally to tackle obesity (Weight of the Fox Valley), domestic violence (Voices of Men), pediatric and adolescent mental health (Catalpa Health) or end of life care. Everyone, including business, benefits when people in our community are healthier, safer in their own homes, able to access mental health care or are ready for the hard decisions to be made when a loved one is dying.
That’s why for ThedaCare, value for our community is our focus, and why we’re willing to look at many ways to achieve it. In the coming months, we at ThedaCare will be sharing in this column how we’re moving toward delivering greater value. I hope you’ll keep reading, and will share your thoughts with us, too. We always find value in the conversation.
Dean Gruner, MD, is the president and CEO of Appleton-based ThedaCare. To send your thoughts to Dean, email dean.gruner@thedacare.org.
