“These collaborations provide an extraordinarily valuable opportunity for improvement. We will bring different areas of expertise and demonstrated excellence, then merge our measured experience,” said Brent James, Intermountain’s Chief Quality Officer, in the Deseret News in July 2015.

RELATED: Collaborations on the rise between Utah and French health care systems

The group consisted of health officials for the French government, as well as reporters from Le Point magazine (the French equivalent of Time magazine):

• Christian Foury - Official Representative of the International Research of the Mission for European and International Relations and Cooperation of the French National Health Insurance Fund.
• Annie Fourard - Medical Advisor of the French National Health Insurance Fund and Head of the Hospitalization Department.
• Jerome Vincent, MD – internist and journalist for Le Point.
• François Malye – health economist reporter for Le Point.

The delegation spent the week touring Intermountain hospitals throughout the state. As well as visiting the innovations at the Intermountain Transformation Lab and Supply Chain Center. The Deseret News published an article also met with the group and of the visit highlighting the connections between French health officials and Intermountain.

“We are here to learn, to learn what we have done at this stage, to compare what we have in order to adapt all the inventions we would like to in France,” said Christian Foury. “I know very well that you are a good healthcare system, considered highly in the world. You are good at quality and at lower costs and that is why we are very interested.”

The officials also have focused heavily on Intermountain’s launch of iCenta. France currently does not have electronic health records. But that will soon change as their first versions will be implemented in June 2016.  The innovations and technology at Intermountain is another large part that the French delegation observed. They are hoping to applying similar technology changes in France.

France and the United States have numerous similarities and also differences. The country only has one single healthcare system while the United States has many options. They have singled out Intermountain due to a variety of reasons. Both entities are focused on population health, improving quality care, and reducing health care costs.

France and Intermountain will continue to work together as the French health care systems looks to continue to improve and to fix healthcare spending. 

“We have to fight the waste in order to improve the quality and to reduce costs,” Foury said. “Those are the things we have to learn from this organization.”

Learn more about Intermountain Healthcare’s commitment to transform healthcare across the country.