Joseph J. Gribik, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Mountains Healthcare Alliance (PMHA), is pleased to announce the additions of Clarion Hospital and Tyrone Hospital to the PMHA membership.
Created in 1996, PMHA is a consortium of 16 rural community hospitals dedicated to enhancing the ability of its members to provide patient centered community-based care and to maintain their status as independent community hospitals. Member hospitals include: ACMH Hospital (Kittanning), Bradford Regional Medical Center, Brookville Hospital, Charles Cole Memorial Hospital (Coudersport), Clearfield Hospital, Elk Regional Health System (St. Marys), Indiana Regional Medical Center, Kane Community Hospital, Laurel Health System (Wellsboro), Mount Nittany Medical Center (State College), Nason Hospital (Roaring Spring), Punxsutawney Area Hospital, Titusville Area Hospital, Windber Medical Center, and new members Clarion Hospital and Tyrone Hospital.
PMHA initiatives have delivered over $20 million in value to the member hospitals since the arrival of staff in late 1998. Several of the notable accomplishments of PMHA have been in the creation of self-insured risk pools in the areas of medical malpractice, health, and dental insurances, which have helped to insulate member hospitals against the rising cost of insurance premiums.
More recently, PMHA has worked diligently in two strategic areas: purchasing and revenue cycle. With purchasing, the member hospitals have been able to utilize their collective $800 million in net revenue for leveraging preferred pricing for goods and services through a consolidated relationship with a single group purchasing organization. In the area of revenue cycle, PMHA has purchased technology on behalf of the member hospitals to enhance various revenue cycle processes and management tools. The technology supports the accumulation of large quantities of disparate data from multiple sources such as insurance companies, then validates the figures and applies business rules to process the data. This approach utilizes the transaction standards formally established in the HIPAA legislation and provides information in an automated fashion. As a result, a significant reduction of the intense manual efforts associated with today’s processing environment will be realized. The system also supports price and patient liability estimations that are increasingly important in today’s shift in coverage to the patient in the form of “out of pocket” costs. Both the patient and the hospital are better and more timely informed about the costs of their healthcare. Such technology would be cost prohibitive as a single hospital but is economically feasible through collective collaboration. In addition to these strategic areas, PMHA also has a track record of accomplishments in the areas of grant writing, clinical, and IT.
The Pennsylvania Mountains Healthcare Alliance mission is to enhance the ability of its members to provide patient centered, community based care. For more information on PMHA, visit www.pmhalliance.org.
