Big Health Care Changes Due in C. Oregon

Federal officials have pledged nearly $2 billion to Gov. John Kitzhaber’s plan to revamp health care.

Local health care providers say it’s good news, as the plan calls for more collaboration between health care providers and local leaders.

Officials told NewsChannel 21 on Monday that the plan will work well here in Central Oregon, because agencies like to work together.

The new model focusing on preventative care could change health care nationwide — and save the state billions of dollars.

It will impact more than 600,000 low-income Oregonians enrolled in the Medicaid program.

“It gives us the opportunity to fundamentally change our delivery model from one that focuses on after the fact acute care to prevention and wellness and the community based management of chronic conditions,” Kitzhaber said last week. “Through an unprecedented collaboration — really an historic collaboration — we’ve arrived at this point.”

It’s a point that local healthcare organizations are happy to arrive at.

Oregon will receive $1.9 billion over the next five years. This year, the state will receive $620 million.

The potential savings for Oregon: $11 billion over the next decade.

“We have wonderful opportunities in Oregon in that our state is really trying to push the envelope in transforming health,” Elaine Knobbs, spokeswoman for Mosaic Medical in Bend, said Monday.

The first effort in the transformation: creating CCOs, or coordinated care organizations, that work together to provide care to a defined population, or those on Medicaid.

The goal: to provide health care and wellness to communities well before they need to see a doctor.

Our local coordinated care organization would cover the tri-county area and would be one of 14 statewide.

“Central Oregon, being such a collaborative regionm is already at the forefront in this state of really thinking about how this new legislation can be used to transform both quality care, health outcomes and funding,” Knobbs said.

Knobbs says these are exciting times for the clinic.

“I think everyone agrees that something needs to happen so that we are saving money and at the same time increasing the care, the quality and the health of all patients,” Knobbs said.

Knobbs says Mosaic has been at the forefront of trying to be innovative and on the cutting edge, and the reforms will help keep it on that path.

“It’s trying to push us out of just thinking about that direct doctor visit, but really thinking about the overall health of a patient in all aspects of their life,” Knobbs said. “It gives even more emphasis to our clinics about merely looking at the transformation of providing patient center quality care to all of our patients.”

Knobbs says about half of the Medicaid patients in Central Oregon are served at Mosaic.

“Last year, Mosaic served over 14,000 people in Central Oregon, and we know that will be going up through the need in our communities and the expansion of services throughout the region,” Knobbs said.

Kitzhaber has said if big changes aren’t made, the medicaid program would have been in trouble.

As long as the state can show it can reduce Medicaid costs by 2 percent within two years, the 600,000 patients won’t be in any danger of losing coverage.

“This is a time of really digging deep into our whole system of health care, and that is a culture that we are all changing,” Knobbs said.