Texas Health Resources and Healthways Advance Physician-Directed Population Health Initiatives Supporting Commercial ACO Design and Deployment

Collaboration Includes Texas Health Physicians Group

ARLINGTON, Texas & NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Texas Health Resources (Texas Health) and Healthways (NASDAQ: HWAY) today announced the launch of two initiatives in their ongoing strategic alignment to deploy an integrated physician-directed population health solution to drive health outcomes and cost savings.

“Texas Health is one of the nation’s leaders in developing an integrated physician-directed population health solution”

The first initiative is implementation of a consistent system-wide approach to optimize the care of inpatients with diabetes and improve coordination of care after the patient is discharged. Texas Health launched the diabetes care coordination initiative in January at five Texas Health hospitals in Dallas, Plano, Arlington, Hurst-Euless-Bedford and Fort Worth.

The second initiative identifies inpatients who are most at-risk for readmissions, and aligns inpatient and post-hospital care teams around the patient’s needs. Effective coordination of care after the patient is discharged can improve quality and patient safety, lower cost, improve patient outcomes and help prevent costly readmissions. Coordination of care across the continuum of services is part of Texas Health’s overall strategy to integrate health services and help patients navigate through the complex environment of care.

Both approaches involve the patient’s primary care provider to facilitate monitoring and timely interventions. These initiatives are critical elements supporting the construct of the accountable care agreement announcement made by Texas Health last week and the ACO agreement announced in mid-January between Texas Health and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas.

Doug Hawthorne, CEO of Texas Health Resources, said, "Texas Health is collaborating with physicians, commercial insurers and employers to develop an accountable care model that not only cares for people when they are ill, but also focuses on keeping people healthy and out of the hospital unless they are acutely sick or injured. Beginning with the physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants of Texas Health Physicians Group, we are leading the way in transforming from the fee-for-service model to a value-based model. We are creating a physician-directed care-team approach that we believe will foster more accountability across the continuum of care, from the individual patient to the physician to every other provider on the team. Our ultimate goal is to help physicians manage the health of their patient populations and improve their health and well-being.”

“Texas Health is one of the nation’s leaders in developing an integrated physician-directed population health solution,” said Jon Scholl, chief strategy officer and executive vice president of Texas Health Resources. “Working with our strategic partner, Healthways, we are building an integrated approach that includes comprehensive services, systems and tools to give physicians an enhanced ability to identify trends in their patient populations. This will facilitate data analysis and predictive modeling based on patient population data to help them identify individual patients who have health risks and could benefit from early interventions. Working with Healthways as we jointly pursue the aims of all of our current and future ACO agreements, the focus will include a new payment model that will reward physicians for meeting quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction measures. These include increasing the number of recommended preventive care and screenings, better management of patients with chronic conditions, such as diabetes, reductions in avoidable hospital readmissions and reductions in Emergency Room visits by improving primary care access hours.”

Healthways president and chief executive officer, Ben R. Leedle, Jr. said, “Our alignment with Texas Health continues to allow expanded opportunities to work together to improve population health and well-being in the Dallas – Fort Worth Metroplex. Healthways has led the way in establishing proven tools and the advanced science to deliver a model that improves well-being, which results in significant reduction of health-related costs. We are now delivering to the market examples of how infusing our experience and proven capabilities to improve well-being into Texas Health’s broad array of healthcare professionals, facilities and services, which includes Texas Health Physicians Group, can support the critical aims of a commercial ACO model. We are grateful for the opportunity to be working with such an outstanding partner.”

Texas Health and Healthways expect to collaborate in designing and implementing additional commercial ACO models with other insurers in the North Texas market in the future.

About Healthways

Healthways is the largest independent global provider of well-being improvement solutions. Dedicated to creating a healthier world one person at a time, the Company uses the science of behavior change to produce and measure positive change in well-being for our customers, which include employers, integrated health systems, hospitals, physicians, health plans, communities, and government entities. We provide highly specific and personalized support for each individual and their team of experts to optimize each participant’s health and productivity and to reduce health-related costs. Results are achieved by addressing longitudinal health risks and care needs of everyone in a given population. The Company has scaled its proprietary technology infrastructure and delivery capabilities developed over 30 years and now serves approximately 40 million people on four continents. Learn more at www.healthways.com.

About Texas Health Resources

Texas Health Resources is one of the largest faith-based, nonprofit health systems in the United States. The health system includes 25 acute care and short-stay hospitals that are owned, operated, joint-ventured or affiliated with Texas Health Resources. It includes the Texas Health Presbyterian, Texas Health Arlington Memorial, and Texas Health Harris Methodist hospitals, Huguley Memorial Medical Center, Texas Health Physicians Group, outpatient facilities, behavioral health and home health, preventive and fitness services, and an organization for medical research and education.

For more information about Texas Health Resources, call 1-877-THR-WELL, or visit www.texashealth.org.