Tufts Health, Partners Renegotiate For Millions In Savings

By The WBUR Newsroom
Jan 18, 2012, 4:30 PM
1 Comments

BOSTON — Partners HealthCare, the company that owns Mass General and Brigham & Women’s hospitals, says it is taking another voluntary step to reduce health care spending in the state.

Partners opened an existing contract with Tufts Health Plan and renegotiated a lower payment rate. The change will save Tufts about $105 million.

Tufts CEO Jim Roosevelt says Partners will also move to payments that are based on keeping people healthy, not just on how many services doctors provide.

“The opportunity that gives for patients and their doctors to reach decisions on their care for the right reasons is really exciting,” Roosevelt said.

The larger context for this is that hospitals are under increasing pressure to show what they can do to address rising health care costs.

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Lcapano1

Finally, Partners does something about the cost of healthcare and it’s big news. While our governor deserves credit for putting the pressure on healthcare providers the two people who started the conversation of Partners hospitals (MGH & B&W) getting much higher rates than other hospitals was Paul Levy, former CEO of Beth Israel Medical Center and Ellen Zane, former CEO of Tufts Medical Center. They were vilified in the healthcare industry for having the audacity to challenge these hospitals. We are now seeing the fruits of their tenacity and bravery. Let’s give credit where credit is also do.