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Partnering with Disruptors: OhioHealth’s Collaboration with ChenMed

By The SHSMD Team posted 12-10-2019 01:24 PM

  
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Primary and preventative care is ripe for disruption and several new organizations, such as Oak Street Health and ChenMed, are moving into the growing area of primary care for older adults. Traditional providers face a variety of options to respond to these disruptors. They can ignore the disruptors, adopt new business models that take advantage of their scale and history, imitate the disruptors' strategies or collaborate. The wisest solution depends on the business environment and nature of the organizations but when two organizations have compatible missions and business goals, collaboration offers unique rewards.

ChenMed's model is to serve moderate-to low-income older adults with complex chronic conditions, who live in under-served areas, and to assume the risk for serving this population. They aim to provide a level of service, such as walk-in appointments whenever they're not feeling well, door-to-door transportation and access to their doctor's cell phone number, associated with more expensive concierge care. ChenMed has a physician-patient ratio of 450:1, compared to the national average of 2,300:1, which allows for more personalized attention and longer visits. Their strategy is to encourage the early detection and comprehensive management of medical conditions, avoiding complications and higher costs through preventative care and cost-effective disease management. Their investment in facilities is relatively modest, approximately $3M to open a new location compared to the nearly $1M cost per bed to open a new hospital. 

OhioHealth — a large, diversified health system based in Columbus — decided to collaborate with ChenMed, recognizing compatible strength and missions. The two organizations jointly opened three new geriatric-dedicated primary care practices in underserved neighborhoods around Ohio's capital city, serving more than 8,000 seniors. ChenMed and OhioHealth may expand the partnership to more locations and as many as 20,000 patients.

Despite the potential for initial losses, OhioHealth sees this as an opportunity for a win-win-win partnership rather than a threat. They clinically integrate ChenMed's model into their system, combining the strengths of ChenMed's primary care physicians with their own 2,100 specialty physicians. Underserved older adults receive the care they need and experience better health outcomes, OhioHealth makes progress toward its population health and business development goals and ChenMed's physicians have strong specialty physician partnerships. 

This blog post is based on an article in the November-December 2019 issue of Spectrum, SHSMD's bimonthly publication for health care strategists.
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