A physician-hospital organization affiliated with Navicent Health in Macon, Ga., is partnering with Stratus Healthcare to potentially offer information technology services to doctors and rural hospitals in southern Georgia, the groups announced last week.
Navicent, whose flagship is the 637-bed Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, is a not-for-profit system that owns a minority stake in the Central Georgia Health Network (CGHN), a physician-hospital organization with 980 physicians and allied health professionals, said Chuck Carroll, CEO of the network.
Stratus is a non-equity collaboration of physicians and more than 20 hospitals co-founded by Navicent CEO Dr. Ninfa Saunders.
Carroll said Stratus and CGHN were separately developing clinically integrated networks that would serve as private information exchanges for doctors and hospitals to share data and medical records. Under the agreement, they will join forces to work toward a single platform, he said.
CGHN is talking to Stratus about finding the capital to build out the network and link doctors far from Macon with Navicent, CGHN and each other, Carroll said.
Physicians need access to such data to comply with value-based reimbursement models that peg some portion of payments to quality and patient-satisfaction metrics. Clinically integrated networks can get that data to providers located far from urban areas, Carroll said.
