Evengelical Hospital President and CEO Kendra Aucker discusses PRIME project successes.
LEWISBURG – Despite some limitations imposed by the US Department of Justice, Evangelical Community Hospital and Geisinger are still able to work together on several fronts. Evangelical president and CEO Kendra Aucker talked about how Geisinger now has a 7.5% minority stake in Evangelical.
“The way that this played out was that it wasn’t a merger and the FTC generally reviews mergers. It was a minority interest so it went to the Department of Justice and they reviewed it from a competitive standpoint,” she said.
She said at this time, Evangelical is a totally independent hospital, there is no control or any kind of governance from Geisinger and there are no Geisinger seats on Evan’s board. She says they do have a professional-services agreement with Geisinger and Geisinger physicians perform some services at Evangelical and GHP patients can receive services at Evan.
Additionally, Evangelical will soon join the Epic Network, the electronic health record currently being used by Geisinger. She says that will greatly streamline care of patients who use both hospitals, “I think from Evangelical’s perspective, it has afforded us what we wanted. We’re too small to own health plan so it gave us tier one access to the health plan, and it allows the clinical providers to get on the Epic platform which is something they really wanted.”
In addition, Geisinger worked with Evangelical on the PRIME project and with the Miller Center in Lewisburg.
As for patients doing “procedure shopping,” Aucker approved of “having people compare costs, especially as costs go up and companies are asking employees to pay more of their own health-care costs.
You can hear the entire Kendra Aucker On the Mark interview on our podcast page, click HERE, or download the program wherever you listen to podcasts.
