12/16/2023 0 Comments My health report summit medical groupAnthony Summit didn’t give them the deal they wanted. It could take its business elsewhere if St. Negotiating pricesīut the alliance had some added leverage. Make more journalism like this possible with a Colorado Sun membership, starting at just $5 a month. “We knew we had to come to the table and do something for our community and our local residents of Summit County,” said Lee Boyles, the hospital’s CEO. Anthony Summit Medical Center, the county’s only hospital. That was a big enough number to get the attention of leaders at Centura Health’s St. But people who shop for health insurance on their own will also be able to be part of the alliance, bringing the total number of people covered through the alliance to around 6,000, in a county with about 30,000 full-time residents. “But if you are persistent and you keep asking questions and you have some partners who will work with you, we think this is going to have some significant change.”Īlong the way, the alliance discovered it had more power than it realized.Ĭurrently, the alliance is made up of several employers - local governments and vacation companies. “You just keep asking questions and you just try to be persistent because this whole health care thing … if you were to set this up from Day 1, no one would set up the health care system that we have,” said Mark Spiers, the president of the board of The Summit Foundation, which provided some support to get the Peak Health Alliance up and running. So, this winter and spring, alliance leaders went to hospital systems across the region and asked a different question: What kind of deal will you give us? The Summit County effort, called the Peak Health Alliance, seeks to answer this by bringing businesses and individuals together to collectively negotiate prices from hospitals and doctor groups before getting any insurance company involved. When it is difficult to know how prices for health services are set - and when those prices are then filtered through an insurance company, which sets its own prices - how can consumers exert power in the marketplace? Gaining leverageĪt the heart of the debate nationwide over health care prices is the question of leverage. MORE: Five numbers to help explain Colorado’s plan to dramatically lower insurance prices. “And it will go a long way toward making it more affordable for Summit County residents to get health care.” “I think that it is a huge first step for our community,” said Drangstveit, the executive director of the Family and Intercultural Resource Center in Silverthorne, which helps people find health coverage. When many people in Summit County go shopping for health coverage next year, Drangstveit said they could see premium prices 20% lower - a savings of hundreds of dollars a month for families. And, despite those challenges, they appear to have pulled it off. In the stodgy world of health policy, this is about as cinematic as it gets: A group of small-town locals, fed up with high prices, fighting together for a better deal from two powerful industries. Families were packing up and moving to find more affordable coverage.īut now, she and other Summit County leaders have led a first-of-its-kind effort in Colorado that is poised to lower health insurance prices for many in the county - and could become a model for communities across the state to gain leverage over a health care system that often feels suffocating. Residents were toughing out illnesses and injuries at home rather than going to the doctor. ![]() Monthly health insurance premiums in Summit County were higher than mortgage payments. Rural Medical Services, Inc.From her office in one of the most picturesque communities in America, Tamara Drangstveit heard every day about the horrors of living there. ![]() PharMerica Knoxville - only Long-Term, Post Acute Skilled Nursing, Senior, Independent, and Behavioral Care.
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