NORTHRIDGE, Calif. & WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Heritage California ACO (HCACO), a Pioneer Accountable Care Organization and affiliate of Heritage Provider Network, and Fresenius Medical Care (NYSE: FMS), North America’s largest provider of kidney care services, announced an agreement today to provide integrated health care management for HCACO’s patients who have End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD). The agreement supports a population health program that allows Fresenius Medical Care to work with HCACO in managing the overall health and coordination of care of these HCACO beneficiaries, with the goal of improving their health outcomes and reducing their total cost of care.
This population health program is modeled on the successful five-year demonstration project that Fresenius Health Partners, a subsidiary of Fresenius Medical Care, conducted with Medicare beneficiaries on dialysis. Concluded in December, 2010 with the United States Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), patients in the program experienced overall improvement in clinical measures including a 24 percent reduction in the rate of mortality and a 20 percent reduction in overall hospitalizations compared to nationally established benchmarks. The project also resulted in health care costs 12 percent below the Medicare Advantage and 4 percent below the Medicare fee-for-service nationally established benchmarks for this population.
”Heritage Provider Network has a long history of providing high-quality, cost-effective coordinated care for large populations,” said Dr. Richard Merkin, President and CEO of Heritage. “We are excited to be partnering with Fresenius Medical Care, the largest dialysis company in the world, to prove that through coordinating care we can improve the lives of individuals suffering from End Stage Renal Disease. Indeed, we see this partnership as a model for how health care should be delivered in the United States.”
“Our overarching objective is to improve the quality of lives and clinical outcomes of people with End Stage Renal Disease and remove unnecessary costs throughout the process,” said Peter Sauer, President, Fresenius Health Partners. “Heritage California ACO is a premier provider of high quality, patient centered health care and we look forward to partnering, to the benefit of their members who have kidney failure.”
About Heritage California ACO
Heritage California ACO is affiliated with the Heritage Provider Network (HPN) family of organizations, which was founded in 1979 by its President and CEO Dr. Richard Merkin. HPN and its affiliates operate throughout eight counties in Southern, Central and Coastal California, as well as in Arizona and New York. HPN delivers high quality, patient centered health care to over 700,000 individuals. HPN is dedicated to quality, affordable health care and putting patients' wellness first, and is on the cutting edge of the accountable care model of health care delivery: coordinated, patient-doctor centric, integrated health care systems that represent the future of health care in the United States. (www.heritageprovidernetwork.com)
About Fresenius Medical Care North America
Through our leading network of more than 2,100 dialysis facilities in North America and our vascular access centers, laboratory, pharmacy and affiliated hospitals and nephrology practices, Fresenius Medical Care provides renal services to hundreds of thousands of people throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada. We are also the continent's top producer of dialysis equipment, dialyzers and related disposable products and a major supplier of renal pharmaceuticals. For more information about the company, visit www.fmcna.com; for information about patient services, visit www.ultracare-dialysis.com