Twenty-six rural hospitals have banded together to form the Ohio High Value Network (OHVN), a clinically integrated network that will serve more than 2.5 million patients.
The network announced Thursday morning is an effort to coordinate care, share operational best practices, reduce contracting costs and lighten member hospitals’ administrative burdens.
The member hospitals are spread across 37 of Ohio’s counties, with an additional hospital in bordering West Virginia. The group said in a release it “is in discussions” with other rural Ohio hospitals that are interested in joining.
“The more we work together, the better we can serve our communities—continuously improving quality, lowering costs and further strengthening rural healthcare,” Myron Lewis, OHVN board chair and president and CEO of Blanchard Valley Health System, said in the announcement.
Management of the network on a day-to-day basis will be guided by Cibolo Health, an advisory group that was responsible for setting up similar rural hospital networks in Minnesota (the Headwaters high-value network, with 17 members) and North Dakota (the Rough Rider high-value network, with 23 member hospitals). Cibolo has described its clinically integrated networks as the healthcare equivalent to “farmers’ cooperatives, giving member hospitals the scale needed to gain a seat at the table with health plans and large health systems.”
The OHVN said it plans to form a committee overseeing clinical and quality initiatives across the network, which will include a clinical representative from each of the network’s member systems. That committee will provide “a forum for clinicians to learn from each other, share best practices that improve patient outcomes and collaborate on ways to ease burdens on medical providers,” said Cibolo’s chief medical officer, A. Clinton MacKinney, M.D.
The announcement noted many of the hospitals that came together to form OHVN already have a history of collaboration under region-level agreements. OHVN brings a similar mentality at greater scale.
“We already know that working together not only provides benefits for our hospitals, but also for our patients, our employees and our communities,” Jeff Graham, president and CEO of member organization Adena Health. “It’s been a goal of mine for more than seven years to form this level of collaboration among our independent hospital systems. With the size and scope of the Ohio High Value Network, we can collaborate on even more impactful areas to enhance our ability to deliver advanced, high-quality care and do so efficiently.”