Insurer and healthcare provider form unique care coordination joint venture

Insurer Independence Blue Cross (Independence) and integrated care management company DaVita HealthCare Partners have jointly formed a new company, Tandigm Health, to deliver high-quality care at a lower cost in the Philadelphia area, a region with some of the highest healthcare costs in the nation.

According to the companies, hospital admissions in the Philadelphia region for people under 65 are the highest among the nation’s largest metropolitan areas and 25 percent higher than the national average. Tandigm Health will attempt to reign in high healthcare costs related to these statistics by uniting Independence’s data with DaVita’s experience in running physician-led outpatient dialysis centers, medical groups and affiliated physician networks that provide coordinated managed care.

The model is for Tandigm Health to partner with Philadelphia-area physicians on systems that will reward the physicians for the quality of the care they deliver and not the quantity of the care they deliver. To track their progress, the doctors will get access to analytical tools and real-time data on patients with difficult to manage chronic conditions such as diabetes, congestive heart failure and pulmonary disease. In addition, Tandigm will provide the patients with community resources, such as more in-home care for frail and elderly patients at greater risk of being hospitalized. The joint venture could also improve physician decision making, reduce duplicative services and improve patient satisfaction and safety.

According to the companies, their joint venture is one of the first in the country to bring together a major insurer and a Fortune 500 healthcare provider. It will be headed by Anthony Coletta, M.D., a board-certified general surgeon, who previously served as the chief medical officer for Holy Redeemer Health System in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., and has 25 years of experience as an attending general surgeon at Bryn Mawr Hospital.

“We believe Tandigm Health represents the future of health care,” Dr. Coletta said in the anouncement. “I’m very excited to begin working with doctors and to lead this physician-centric venture.”