Medical care in south central Illinois now has a new name and a new focus.
Good Samaritan Hospital in Mt. Vernon and St. Mary's Hospital in Centralia are now part of a larger group known as SSM Health.
Regional President Phil Gustafson says this new affiliation will help Good Sam cut down on the duplication of services in its nine county coverage area.
"This Friday we're going to be looking at is there a common information system that we can use so when a patient is taken care of here, Clay County doesn't have this information system, so how do we get that information from here to there in a timely manner and back and forth? The other part of that is trying to be a good partner to those communities. There are a lot of things that they can do in these hospitals, and once we take care of them here, can we get them back to the community where the family is close and where the hospital can take care of them."
He says the consolidation of health insurance companies across the country is driving up patients' costs. Gustafson says Good Sam and St. Mary's are looking at how to reduce those costs by setting up their own insurance plan, with help from SSM partners.
"In Wisconsin, we have acquired a health plan there, the Dean Health Plan. They've been doing this for ten years, so we have another place where we can kind of learn how to do that. Illinois is not Wisconsin, but we can learn a lot of the principles from there."
Gustafson says the current model is unsustainable because costs are rising at rapid rates. He says patients can actually help reduce their costs by taking medications in the proper amounts and at the proper times.
SSM includes 19 hospitals (soon to be 20) in Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. It has more than 1,300 physicians and 30,000 employees.
