McKesson Jumps on Bundled Care Bandwagon

The McKesson Corporation, a healthcare services and information technology company currently ranked 14th on the Fortune 500, has joined the Employers Centers of Excellence Network (ECEN) to provide its employees increased access to affordable high quality hip and knee replacement care.

As earlier reported by OTW, the Pacific Business Group on Health developed ECEN. Other members of the organization are Wal-Mart and Lowe’s corporations. A 2013 study that found the cost of a hip or knee replacement varied up to 10 fold across the country with no direct correlation to care quality spurred the development of ECEN. To deal with this variable cost situation ECEN negotiated a fixed bundled payment rate for all procedure-related costs at five carefully selected hospitals located throughout the country.

The result is that employees benefit from access to high quality care at reduced or no cost to them as McKesson and other participating employers will not only cover the majority of the cost, but also support travel costs for patients and a caregiver.

“We are proud to offer our employees the opportunity to be treated by top surgeons at distinguished medical centers that are committed to the highest quality standards and have demonstrated excellence in joint replacement surgery, ” said Gerri Burruel, vice president of benefits, McKesson Corporation. “In addition to cost benefits, the ECEN program provides support for patients at every step, and we expect that our employees will be enthusiastic about the guided ECEN experience.”

ECEN centers to date are, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore, Maryland; Kaiser Permanente, Irvine Medical Center, Irvine, California; Mercy Hospital, Springfield, Missouri; Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle, Washington. According to the press release, expansion to additional centers is underway.