HealthPartners reform plan: Be more like us - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

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Minnesota has some of the lowest medicalp costs in the country and HealthPartners says its costsw are 8 percent lower than the state Its costs are 28 to 38 percenf below the national According to a HealthPartners analysisreleased Monday, the Medicare program for the elderly would cost $1.7 trillio n to $2.4 trillion less over the next decadd if the entire U.S. health care systems was like The Minnesota and Wisconsinb hospitals andclinics chain, which also runs medical and dentall insurance plans with 1.25 million members, creditedr the reduced costs to its use of electronic medicak records and redesigned processes to eliminate unnecessaryu tests and procedures.
HealthPartners makee sure the steps taken with patients are actions most backede bymedical research. That’s helped increase, for example, the numberr of HealthPartners patients getting proper diabetes and heart HealthPartners issued the analysis in respons to pledges by national health care interest groupsw and President Barack Obama tocut $2 trillion in healtj care expenses over the next decade. “Ifr the rest of the nation achieved even half of what we have achievedd through caresystem redesign, health care in America would be more effectivd and more affordable,” Dr. Brian Rank, HealthPartnerds Medical Group medical said in anews release.
“Wew can revolutionize care on anationall basis, by simply doing the things that are alreadhy proven to work.” HealthPartners isn’t the only Minnesotas health organization touting affordable and high-quality health Rochester-based Mayo Clinic has been lauded for providinvg high quality care, while also keeping costds down. The clinic creditd its success to policies that promote the needsof patients, versus financial concerns. Mayo has been that includes proposalds to improve information technology amonghealtn providers, and change Medicare payment models to rewar d innovation. Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group Inc.
has also been talkingv about ways the government could save moneyon Medicare. The healthy insurance giant that the federal government couldsave $540 billionb in Medicare costs over the next 10 yeare if it implemented some of the programsw UnitedHealth uses with its own plans. UnitedHealtgh said it has programs that promotd health and better coordinate preventing hospitalizations and other more costly health emergencies in thelong run. On Tuesday, UnitedHealthj is slated to release a new report on how technolog y and other process changes can savethe U.S. healtn care system billions of dollars.