Hospitals find affiliation just what doctor ordered

To stay competitive, many Colorado community hospitals are affiliating with large national health-care systems.

Longmont United Hospital recently partnered with Centura Health and Platte Valley Medical Center affiliated with SCL Health.

LUH officially joined Centura in August. As part of that action, the hospital and its affiliated physician practices are integrating their systems with that of the Centura network to optimize the value of health care for consumers, aligning providers and creating systems that support improved convenience, care coordination and communication.

About four years ago, the LUH board looked at the massive changes going on in health care and tried to determine how it could best serve the Longmont community, said Peter Powers, LUH’s vice president for operations. Part of that discussion focused on whether it would be best to remain an independent, standalone hospital, join a larger health system or sell the hospital to a company with deeper pockets.

“With outside assistance, we determined that the way health care was changing we didn’t have the size and scale to be able to effectively deliver health care the way it was changing,” Powers said. So LUH reached out to the five major health systems in Colorado looking for an affiliation partner. After a thorough process, the LUH board unanimously chose Centura Health.

Creating an affiliation with a large health-care system provides economies of scale, which are critical, Powers said.

“It enhances our ability to create better value to our patients,” he said. “We are very focused on lowering the cost of care.”

He used supplies as an example of how the affiliation with Centura helps LUH. Centura is part of a massive buying organization through its sponsors.

“We can buy supplies at much lower pricing than we could as a standalone facility,” he said. “From a Longmont perspective, our community board of directors was very intent on remaining in the health-care business. Sometimes, if you up and sell a hospital, the local board would go away. Our local board will remain in place. …They also really wanted a system that best positions us in the system. That, they felt, was the best choice for the community.”

Sharon Burnette, group director of marketing and communications for Centura Health’s Mountains and North Denver Operating Group, said that “philosophically, Longmont is very aligned with Centura’s philosophy and how we care for patients. I think that was a big part of why we felt this was a good opportunity. We wanted to expand our footprint into the north.”

In October, Platte Valley Medical Center, which serves the northeast Denver metro area, joined Broomfield-based SCL Health, one of the top-ranked health systems in the country, to provide more comprehensive services for the Front Range.

Like LUH, Platte Valley Medical Center went through a long selection process looking at a number of leading health-care systems that serve Colorado before settling on SCL Health.

It chose SCL because of the high performance of its other hospitals and clinics in quality and patient satisfaction; its charitable mission and history of providing care for all; its strong financial performance and stability; and its vision and plan for the future.

“We set out to find a partner who would help us build upon our legacy serving Brighton and neighboring communities,” said Platte Valley Medical Center board chair Faye Hummel. “It’s also about two excellent organizations coming together to bring expanded access to resources and services, and enhanced quality of care for our community. SCL Health proved to be unmatched in performance, people, and in their passion for serving others.”

Platte Valley remains a separate entity, with its own administration, medical staff, employees and board of directors, but it now has access to SCL Health’s breadth of experience and resources and, together with SCL Health, will address the new requirements for comprehensive, areawide population health management.

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