Intermountain Press Release

Salt Lake City —Intermountain Healthcare Specifically Credited for High-Quality, Efficient Care

Medicare spending could be reduced by a third if the nation provided healthcare the way it's provided in Salt Lake City. That's the finding of a national study by Dartmouth Medical School released today. The study names the Salt Lake City area, served by Intermountain Healthcare, as a model for medical care of chronically ill elderly patients.

The study, known as the Dartmouth Atlas Project and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, examined the records of 4.7 million Medicare enrollees who died from 2000 to 2003 and had at least one of 12 chronic illnesses. For the first time, the 2006 Dartmouth Atlas Project identified specific hospitals and communities as examples of high-quality/low-cost care. The study specifically cites Intermountain Healthcare along with the Mayo Clinic of Rochester, Minn, as organizations that provide high quality, highly efficient care.

The study found that:
"Medicare could have realized substantial savings – $40 billion, or nearly one-third of what it spent for their care over the four years – if all U.S. hospitals practiced at the high-quality/low-cost standard set by the Salt Lake City region."

Overall, the study shows that:
"Staggering variations in how hospitals care for chronically-ill elderly patients indicate serious problems with quality of care and point toward unnecessary spending by Medicare."

It also found that:
"Lower utilization of acute-care hospitals and physician visits could actually lead to better results for patients and prolong the solvency of the Medicare program."

These findings are especially important because:
"The care of people with chronic illness accounts for more than 75 percent of all U.S. health care expenditures.

"Using this unique database, researchers compared every region in the country to three regions that provide high-quality/low-cost care: Salt Lake City, Utah, served primarily by Intermountain Healthcare; Rochester, Minn., served largely by the Mayo Clinic; and Portland, Ore., the largest and most metropolitan region in a state that has made improvement in end of life care a public policy goal. If over the four-year period every region in the country had used hospitals and physician services in a manner similar to practice patterns in Salt Lake City, the $123 billion Medicare spent for these patients would have been reduced by $40 billion, nearly one third. By the Mayo Clinic benchmark, savings would have been $19 billion. By the Portland benchmark, savings would have been $38 billion."

The complete study is available online in portable document format (PDF); sections profiling Intermountain Healthcare begin on page 61:

• The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care
• "The Care of Patients with Severe Chronic Illness: A Report on the Medicare Program by the Dartmouth Atlas Project"
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