Marketplace: Partners, Tufts Renegotiate Deal, Ga. Insurer-Provider Fight Grows
Partners HealthCare and the Tufts Health Plan have renegotiated their contract that will lower Tufts' reimbursements to Partners by $105 million to save money in Massachusetts. In the meantime, an insurer/provider fight in Georgia is growing, and there is marketplace news from Oregon and Colorado.
Boston Globe: Partners Recasts Deal With Tufts, Limiting Pay
A new contract struck between Partners HealthCare System Inc. and Tufts Health Plan will help control health care costs in Massachusetts by limiting payment increases to Partners' hospitals and doctors to the rate of inflation, both sides said yesterday. Partners, the state's largest hospital and physicians organization, tore up the last two years of its existing contract with the health insurer, replacing the pact with a new four-year agreement that, while still giving Partners more money each year, will lower Tufts' reimbursements to the medical care provider by about $105 million from what they would have been under the former rate structure (Weisman, 1/19).
WBUR's CommonHealth blog: Tufts Health Plan And Partners Renegotiate, Estimate $105M In Savings
The state's largest hospital network, Partners Health Care, has signed a second contract that trims health care spending. A deal out today with Tufts Health Plan is expected to reduce payments over four years by $105 million dollars: Partners opened an existing contract with Tufts to re-negotiated a lower payment rate (Bebinger, 1/18).
Georgia Health News: Blue Cross vs. Tenet: Will Someone Blink?
With less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 deadline, the contract battle between Tenet Healthcare and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia shows no signs of resolution. If a new contract is not reached before then, Blue Cross members would be out of network if they go to any of Tenet's five hospitals in Georgia, all of which are in the Atlanta region (Miller, 1/18).
The Lund Report (an Ore. news service): Legacy Health System Cuts Work Force by 400
Legacy Health System is preparing to reduce its work force by 400 employees because of a $40 million budget gap that includes $30 million in Medicaid payment reductions. ... "Even with these reductions," [Dr. George Brown, president of Legacy] told employees, "we will still have uncertainty around future Medicaid and Medicare reductions that may influence our actual budget gap" (Lund-Muzikant, 1/18).
The Lund Report (an Ore. news service): Managed Care Plans Have $252 Million in Their Reserve Accounts
Oregon’s preparing to launch a major healthcare transformation that will lead to the creation of coordinated care organizations (CCOs) and integrate physical, mental and dental care for more than 600,000 people on the Oregon Health Plan. But an important question hangs in the balance. What will happen to the millions of dollars in reserve funds now held by the managed care plans that currently provide such services? (Waldroupe, 1/19).
Health Policy Solutions (a Colo. news service): University Hospital, Med School Poised For Expansion
If Colorado Springs voters approve the plan, the University of Colorado Hospital (which is affiliated with the university, but is an independent legal and financial entity) will assume administration of the nonprofit Memorial Hospital. That would be one more step in the long-term drive to expand the University of Colorado Hospital into a statewide nonprofit health care and education network (Carman, 1/18).
