Why YHVN
Problems Facing Rural Healthcare
Many challenges faced by rural hospitals stem from, or are exacerbated by, their smaller size. They often lack scale in areas such as recruitment, patient volume, and purchasing power. Yellowstone High Value Network empowers rural hospitals to achieve the benefits of scale while maintaining their independence. Here are common challenges and how Montana’s collaborative high-value network solutions address or resolve them.
Rural Hospital Challenges
- Loss of operational control through health system affiliations
- Limited regulatory and payment policy voice and influence
- Inadequate training and support for leaders and managers
- Difficult providing isolated physicians with peer-to-peer support
- Relationships with large health systems based on outdated “hub and spoke” model
- Underdeveloped clinical and financial data systems
- Payer-designed, value-based programs that are not practical in the rural setting
- Lack of purchasing power and inefficient resource utilization
- Too few covered lives impedes positive, value-based performance
- Patient and service volumes lack critical mass for value-based contracting
Yellowstone High Value Network Solutions
- Maintaining control through interdependence with peers
- Serving as the preeminent and authoritative voice for rural healthcare
- Sharing learning among leaders and managers through roundtables/competency committees
- Supporting physicians with clinical integration committees composed of their peers
- Supporting valued partnerships based on mutual opportunity and accountability
- Implementing a population health platform for real-time sharing of cost and quality data
- Creating health plan products designed to recognize and reward rural strengths
- YHVN shared services build group purchasing strength and efficient resource utilization
- Aggregating YHVN-covered lives provides necessary scale for managing value-based risk
- Combining patients through a clinically integrated network allows single-signature contracting
