The Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network (VHAN) looked back on its past and ahead to its future in a recent member webinar.
“Transforming Health Care Together: VHAN’s 2024 Impact & Future Vision,” featured Cindy Powell, MD, VHAN executive director and chief medical officer, along with other VHAN leadership.
Here are some highlights:
Celebrating 12 years of impact
Powell reflected on the network’s 12 years of service. VHAN started as an idea at a Vanderbilt University Medical Center Clinical Enterprise retreat to form a physician-led network of leading hospitals and physicians focused on improving the health of communities in Tennessee and beyond. The network launched in December 2012, with four founding hospitals in Middle Tennessee: VUMC, Maury Regional Medical Center, NorthCrest Medical Center and Williamson Medical Center.
Now serving 316,000 patients, VHAN today is made up of 67 hospitals, 12 health systems, more than 7,300 providers and 372 physician practices.
“Our network’s success is a testament to the dedication of our members and our shared focus on quality care and affordability,” Powell said. “Today, swiftly growing and strategically planned, it’s grown into the largest physician-led network of leading doctors, regional health systems and other health care providers in Tennessee and one of the largest in the nation.”
VHAN is a clinically integrated network of physicians, nurses and allied professionals with a mission to improve the health of the communities that it touches. Through value-based contracts, members provide quality care, collaborating with payers to ensure that employers have access to VHAN’s high-performing network for their employees and dependents.
The revenue earned through these arrangements is distributed back to participating practices to reward and incentivize improved quality and cost efficiency. Over the past 12 years, the network has generated over $210 million in savings created for VHAN health plans, resulting in $81 million in shared savings and quality bonuses distributed to network members.
Achieving quality benchmarks
VHAN continues to outperform benchmarks in patient care, including trending to and above National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) benchmarks for key cancer screenings in commercial and Medicare Advantage contracts.
OnePoint implementation positively impacts patient care
Pam Bruce, DNP, MSN, RN, CPPS, director of Quality and Clinical Transformation for VHAN, showcased the implementation of OnePoint, VHAN’s new population health data management tool offering deeper insights into patient opportunities, quality performance and cost of care.
As new features are implemented, such as an admission-discharge-transfer (ADT) registry for admission/discharge insights and performance in value-based contracts, practice performance and patient care will be enhanced, Bruce said.
“This tool can provide a clear view of practice performance as well as patient-level details and other avenues that can offer opportunities that positively impact patient care and our performance in value-based contracts,” Bruce said.
VHAN has onboarded 55 network practices to OnePoint, including 142 practice staff, impacting more than 220,000 patients.
Support for patients across the care continuum
VHAN leaders emphasized how they are evolving the network’s clinical programs and patient engagement strategies to better meet people where they are. These services include behavioral health resources, health plan benefit insights, chronic condition management and ongoing utilization. Also included are new diagnosis support programs such as Deviceless Remote Patient Monitoring powered by CareSignal. VHAN’s Care Management team initiated a CareSignal pilot program with a small group of adult patients diagnosed with diabetes and pre-diabetes.
Strategic growth and collaboration
Leadership is continuously exploring strategic initiatives to strengthen the network, including VHAN staff involvement in key industry organizations, peer learning from other networks and clinical program expansion to better meet the needs of patients.
For more information about VHAN, visit https://www.vhan.com/news/.
