Calif. collaborative will first rely on Anthem for data analytics

The seven Southern California hospitals and healthcare systems that have joined forces with insurance giant Anthem to create a super-sized coordinated-care organization will rely on more conventional data-sharing and analytics for care management and coordination, at least at first.

The providers—Cedars-Sinai Health System, Good Samaritan Hospital and UCLA Health, all based in Los Angeles; Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena; MemorialCare Health System in Fountain Valley; PIH Health in Whittier; and Torrance Memorial Medical Center—have teamed up with California's No. 2 health insurance provider to create a limited liability corporation called Vivity.

To improve efficiency and effectiveness, the partnership will be “enabled by such things as a common electronic medical records system, shared care management systems, joint wellness resources” and other efficiencies, according to a media statement.

Pam Kehaly, Anthem's west region president, said that by working together, the partners will “find ways to become more efficient.” She gave a hypothetical example of a patient coming into an emergency department after stepping on a nail. The patient couldn't recall precisely when he had his last tetanus shot, so as a precaution, he was given one in the ED.

“Can you imagine the power of having all these systems working together sharing data?” to avoid the second and unnecessary tetanus shot, Kehaly asked.

But for now, the seven systems have disparate EHRs from Epic Systems Corp. and Cerner Corp., said MemorialCare CEO Barry Arbuckle, and they may explore creating their own private health information exchanges.

In the interim, Anthem will share its existing claims and limited clinical data collections—such as labs—with its provider partners, and will supply data analytics as well, according to Kehaly.

“At Anthem, we do have an infrastructure that allows us to produce actionable data to support medical treatment,” Kehaly said. “So we will be pushing that data out to our partners.”

Kehaly also mentioned Cal INDEX, a proposed statewide health information exchange and data collaborative announced last month by Anthem and Blue Shield of California. The two insurers have committed a combined $80 million to get the exchange off the ground.

“The goal of that program is to collect data from all of the insurance companies and providers, so we are in the future hoping there is an opportunity for us to tap into that,” Kehaly said.

Integrated delivery systems were often mentioned during an Anthem press conference as an example of what the seven systems and the health plan sought to emulate with the collaborative. Kaiser Permanente, the biggest integrated system in the state, also was mentioned frequently. Kaiser is already on a single EHR, adding the last of its divisions last year to its Care Everywhere health information exchange.

Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn

Bob Herman contributed to this story.