Health care reform changes coming to C. Oregon

The Oregon Health Authority has put Pacific Source Community Solutions in charge of the region’s first CCO, or Community Care Organization.

The CCOs are a key ingredient of Gov. John Kitzhaber’s prescription to change health care in the state. Pacific Source will begin operating on Aug. 1, becoming one of the first eight certified CCOs in the state.

“I’m excited about CCO development. because it allows us to do things differently,” Dr. Robin Henderson, Central Oregon Health Council spokeswoman, said Tuesday. “It allows us to really transform care.”

The Central Oregon Health Council is a group of local providers who came together to talk about what needs to be done to transform health care.

This week, they got their answer, as Pacific Source will become the High Desert’s CCO.

“Everybody is rowing in the same direction,” Henderson said. “And we are all going towards the same goal: better health, better care and lower cost.”

CCOs lay the foundation for the way care will be coordinated between hospitals, physicians and other providers for the more than 600,000 Oregon Health Plan patients.

Henderson says those who don’t use the health plan very often, about 75 to 80 percent of those affected, are really not going to notice much of a difference.

It’s the 20 to 25 percent who have high needs who will feel the impacts.

“We want people to be in their homes,” Henderson said. “We want people to receive care where its most convenient for them.”

One of the main projects in the transformation is in the emergency room. Henderson says the plan wants to help stop high-frequency users who treat the ER as their doctor’s office, at a very high cost to everyone in the system.

“If we keep driving everybody to the hospital or the most expensive levels of care, we are going to bankrupt our system,” Henderson said. “We are going to bankrupt our state, and our kids aren’t going to get the education they need.”

A story health officials like to tell is of a 95-year-old woman with a chronic heart condition who couldn’t afford an air conditioner at home, went into congestive heart failure and ended up in the hospital with a two-week stay — at a cost of $150,000.

“With a $97 air conditioner, we could have changed that,” Henderson said.

“By doing those types of little things that we know work but aren’t necessarily covered, we are saving the entire plan money that we can reinvest back into our community,” Henderson said. “And the wellness of our community, making Central Oregon, the healthiest place to live in the nation.”

Oregon will get nearly $2 billion in federal funds over the coming decade to implement this key piece of health care reform.