By Adam Hocking

Editor

MARSHFIELD — The Marshfield Clinic Health System (MCHS) is seeking an invitation to join the recently formed partnership abouthealth, which is made up of seven of Wisconsin’s largest health care systems including Aspirus, Aurora Health Care, Bellin Health, Gundersen Health System, ProHealth Care, ThedaCare, and UW Health.

Through the collaboration of these health systems, abouthealth believes it can advance clinical quality, efficiency, and customer experience. According to data provided by MCHS, abouthealth offers patients access to 44 hospitals and 5,680 physicians as of Sept. 30.

MCHS CEO Dr. Susan Turney said that Clinic leadership has met with abouthealth CEO Greg Devine and believes that the partnership would be a good fit for MCHS.

“We realized that abouthealth best met our organizational needs around innovation, high quality care, and really a clinical integration model that could really help us be the best, highest performers around care coordination and ultimately lowering the cost of the care,” Turney said.

In addition to affordability for patients, Turney said the ability to share information and best practices between the systems would be main advantages to MCHS joining abouthealth.

“This is an opportunity to share those best practices and really look at ways of continuing to provide seamless care in our communities more efficiently and more effectively, … which will have a cost impact,” Turney said.

Turney did not have an exact timeline for the process but said that MCHS will now wait for a formal invitation to join abouthealth. She said she hopes to have a decision from abouthealth within the first quarter of 2015.