Geisinger Medical Center has been designated a Center of Excellence (COE) for hip and knee replacement surgeries in the Employers Centers of Excellence Network (ECEN) by Health Design Plus, known for its creation and management of employer-sponsored health plan offerings and direct-to-employer bundled contracting, and the Pacific Business Group on Health, a nonprofit business coalition focused on health care quality and affordability.
Geisinger, which seeks to provide both high-quality and cost-effective medical care, reported that it now has the only hospital in the country within the ECEN that is a designated COE for cardiac, spine, bariatric and hip and knee replacement surgeries.
Geisinger Medical Center, the organization's flagship campus in Danville, is one of 13 hospitals in the United States to earn the COE designation. Other centers include Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic.
As part of the ECEN joint replacement program, patients visit a team of joint care specialists that includes a surgeon, an internal medicine physician, and physical/occupational therapists. Care is coordinated across multiple specialties by a registered nurse coordinator, who is a resource for the patients throughout their stay in Danville. Other specialists are included based on the patient's individual clinical needs.
The ECEN provides employees access to care for elective surgeries at COEs across the United States. Through the ECEN, patients receive care at little or no cost, and employers achieve predictable costs and overall savings on employee benefit programs.
The ECEN selection qualifies both the hospital and its surgeons based on quality and outcomes data at the individual surgeon level. The assessment criteria include a review of more than 30 public data metrics, interviews with the clinical team and an on-site visit to observe the patient's complete experience. Upon satisfactory data review, an in-depth site visit is performed by the designating bodies that follows a patient tracer methodology. ECEN centers must demonstrate exceptional clinical outcomes and patient experience, including shared decision-making.
Hospital providers in the network utilize bundled rates, meaning that all costs are included as a single lump sum, which offers transparent and predictable costs. Participating employers have agreed to pay for the travel costs for their employees and waive their standard patient contributions, such as deductibles and copays.
The initiative was launched on July 1, and Geisinger physicians have already seen several patients since then. For more information, readers may visit http://www.geisinger.org/destination-medicine-news.
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