Centura Health and DaVita HealthCare Partners on Thursday announced a Colorado-based joint venture that their CEOs say will give Coloradans better care at lower cost through innovations in case management and preventive care.
Englewood-based Centura Health CEO Gary Campbell and Denver-based DaVita HealthCare Partners CEO Kent Thiry said in a joint interview Wednesday that their 50-50 partnership will represent a paradigm shift in health-care delivery achieved through sophisticated analytical tools and financial incentives for physicians and other providers who keep patients well. The focus, they said, will be preventive care rather than fees for services.
The venture will launch Jan. 1.
Centura Health works with more than 6,000 physicians and runs more than 15 hospitals and six senior living communities in Colorado and western Kansas.
DaVita HealthCare Partners is the parent company of DaVita Kidney Care, which provides dialysis services to 168,000 patients at 2,119 U.S. outpatient clinics. The HealthCare Partners business manages medical groups and physician networks in five states, providing integrated care management for about 829,000 patients. Colorado is not among those five states.
“We are champing at the bit to get started,” Campbell said. “One of the things I love best about this partnership between a not-for-profit, faith-based corporation and a public, for-profit corporation is how completely we share the same sense of mission.”
The combined expertise will be used with Centura Health’s physician-led network of providers, Colorado Health Neighborhoods, to manage 100,000 lives.
DaVita has been for several years and in 2012 for $4.4 billion.
Campbell said he was struck in meeting Thiry how “his and our organizations share a number of common values, including integrity and excellence.”
Savings can be achieved and shared in their new joint venture, the CEOs said, with heavy investment in developing better patient and population databases. They will enable providers to identify and reach out early to at-risk individuals.
“We will be rewarding physicians for keeping people out of hospitals,” Thiry said.
Campbell said administrators would be tracking clinical outcomes, blood tests, hospital admissions and patient satisfaction.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276, edraper@denverpost.com or twitter.com/electadraper
