Cedar Rapids held up as model for health cost containment

Cedar Rapids healthcare providers expect to know in two months if the community will receive a $20 million federal grant to develop a “healthcare information exchange.”

The exchange would be a network for sharing information among healthcare providers.

St. Luke's Hospital CEO Ted Townsend, Physicians Clinic of Iowa Chief Medical Officer Jim Levett spoke hopefully about the grant application to the Downtown Rotary in Cedar Rapids Monday.

“It really is within our reach to be able to offer almost seamless information sharing,” Charles told the group at the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons ballroom.

A coalition of healthcare providers from the Cedar Rapids area have applied for one of 15 Beacon grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Cedar Rapids was one of only 10 United States communities highlighted in a healthcare cost project called “How Did They do That?” by the Dartmouth Institute and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

The project identified for study 10 communities in the United States that offer high quality healthcare at costs well below the national average.

“If the whole United States looked like these places, we wouldn't have a healthcare crisis,” institute CEO Donald Berwick said in introducing the report last September.

In Cedar Rapids, Berwick said healthcare costs about 27 percent less than the national average.

“The quality of care seems to be about as good as anywhere else in the country,” he said.

The report highlighted cooperation to reduce healthcare costs in Cedar Rapids, pointing to efforts to avoid unnecessary duplication of services.

Townsend said Cedar Rapids healthcare leaders don't really understand how they arrived at the position that is admired in the report. He said healthcare costs are still too high, and the community needs to understand how it can lower costs in the future.

Sharing information is one way the system can be improved.

“We like to create an integrated deliver system where we can integrate care without having a common business entity,” Lovett said.