Rainy Lake Medical Center in International Falls has joined with eight other regional health care providers to form Wilderness Health, the group announced Monday in Duluth.
While the member health care providers will remain independent, they will work together to improve the quality of patient care and outcomes.
Along with RLMC, members of Wilderness Health are Bigfork Valley Hospital, Bigfork; Community Memorial Hospital, Cloquet; Cook County North Shore Hospital, Grand Marais; Cook Hospital, Cook; Fairview Range, Hibbing; Lake View, Two Harbors; Mercy Hospital, Moose Lake; and St. Luke’s, Duluth.
Dan Odegaard, RLMC CEO, called the formation of Wilderness Health and the independence of its members a good thing for RLMC and the other facilities.
"The ultimate goals are for clinical integration within the systems in northeastern Minnesota and greater efficiency in the treatment of patient populations," Odegaard told The Journal Tuesday. "The formalized collaboration allows the organizations to reap the benefits of a shared service model, while retaining independence."
Wilderness Health values rural health care providers but also understands the challenges that can arise providing care in small communities, especially when there are limited resources available, Cassandra Beardsley, executive director of Wilderness Health, said in a statement.
“The nine members of Wilderness Health will be working collaboratively to share best practices and coordinate patient care, which is not always feasible working alone,” Beardsley said. “By working together we can help ensure patients that their care will continue to be in their local community, just like it always has been."
Odegaard agreed, saying the nine member organizations want to keep health care local to patients and ensure patients’ freedom of choice by maintaining the independence of smaller facilities.
"They hope to do this by working together to identify operating efficiencies and reducing costs through shared service opportunities," Odegaard said. "They hope to better coordinate and improve patient care."
There is incredible value in working together and planning for patient care is an active and continuous process that includes an integrated system of settings, services and providers, said Dr. David Spoelhof, medical director of Wilderness Health and chair of the quality committee.
“It is our goal to collaborate throughout the patient’s continuum of care and identify areas for improvement with care coordination,” he said in a statement.
Opportunities for areas of improvement include chronic disease management and critical care transfers, he said.
RLMC patients will be able to see more specialists as a result of the collaboration, but when they will start locally is not yet known, Odegaard said.
The regional collaborative has a number of common goals, Odegaard said. Those goals include:
- Keeping health care local to patients by maintaining independence of facilities while maximizing operating efficiencies and reducing costs.
- Coordination and improvement of patient care.
- Possible participation in alternative payment models, such as accountable care organizations and bundled payments.
- Exploring shared service opportunities.
One of Wilderness Health’s first initiatives will be to use data to enhance patient care coordination, according to a news release.
"We’ll be able to identify those patients who have missed preventive screenings, such as mammograms and colonoscopies," said Michael Delfs, CEO of Mercy Hospital in Moose Lake and vice chair of Wilderness Health. “By using data, we can identify which patients are at high risk for hospitalizations and work towards preventing that.”
Expertise will be shared among members while keeping patients in their local communities to receive care, he said.
Some of these enhanced technological health care tools are beyond reach for individual health care providers and Wilderness Health works to create bridges among these rural health care providers, according to a release.
“Wilderness Health’s goal is to bring together rural, independent health care providers to share information, resources and best practices to improve health care for patients,” said John Strange, CEO of St. Luke’s and chair of Wilderness Health. “Wilderness Health respects the autonomy of our members, understands that independence creates flexibility and values the expertise of our members. We are not looking to change that but rather build upon it."
Wilderness Health was legally incorporated on Dec. 12, 2013. To learn more about Wilderness Health and its initiatives, visit www.wildernesshealthmn.org.
