Providers collaborate to emphasize preventive care for all and the reduction of complications in cases of major chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease.
A non-profit hospice emphasizes comfort for the dying over futile chemotherapy and surgery, extending life an average of 10 days and saving $5,150 for every person who dies there.
The one dominant home health agency is non-profit, not owned by doctors ordering treatment that brings them profits.
Regional system of electronic medical records allows all providers to be warned of allergies, complications, medical history; cuts duplicated tests; collects statistics for peer review.
All pregnant women are guaranteed pre-natal care. This cuts prematurity, improves babies’ health, and cuts expensive days in the intensive-care nursery.
Nearly all patients have a personal doctor for primary care. Such “medical homes” coordinate and improve care, and reduce expensive care by specialists.
Healthcare agencies work together to recruit physicians, and increase the ratio of primary care physicians to specialists, reducing expensive procedures.
A local family medicine residency program has trained 50 doctors who stayed to practice in Mesa County, locally easing a national shortage of primary care physicians.
The regional hospital subsidizes a low-priced clinic for the uninsured, who receive faster care than in the hospital emergency room. By cutting expensive and unpaid care in the ER, the hospital saves millions of dollars.
Rocky Mountain Health Plans, the leading insurer, subsidizes after-hours clinics, providing patients with care faster, and reducing expensive emergency-room visits.
The leading insurer pays doctors the same rates for all patients, so they have no financial reason to decline to take patients on Medicaid and Medicare. Those patients have no problem finding a personal physician, as elsewhere, and therefore receive better, steadier and less expensive care.
Most healthcare providers are non-profit, with mission statements focusing on serving the community.
Colorado law caps medical malpractice awards at $1 million, reducing marginally useful actions aimed at staving off lawsuits.
Area has unusually low rates of obesity, diabetes, and other major chronic illnesses. It is not clear how much is due to original health and genetics of local population, and how much is due to area’s emphasis on prevention, and its near-universal care.
Grand Junction: How it achieved top-quality healthcare, at low cost
In a five-part series, Colorado Public News examines how Grand Junction, Colo. has emerged as a model of low-cost, high-quality, near-universal healthcare.
♦ Part 1 details how health care professionals have built a system with an emphasis on primary care and prevention. Accompanying the stories are charts ranking more than 300 cities for cost and quality, and another chart detailing the differences in spending at the end of life in high- and low-cost cities.
♦ Part 3 features a video on Grand Junction's healthcare system, and a bullet-point breakdown of the how the system is unusual. At 8 p.m. on Wednesday evening, KBDI Channel 12 in Denver will broadcast Studio 12, a discussion and live call-in program, focused on the Grand Junction healthcare system.
Bill Scanlon wrote this story while participating in The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. CPN is grateful for the support of the fellowship, and readers like you.
CPN on Studio 12: Healthcare in Colorado
CPN's Bill Scanlon and guests join host Tamara Banks to take a cursory look at how Grand Junction's health system has become a national model for healthcare.
In this hour-long Studio 12 presentation, you'll hear from Dr. Michael Pramenko, president-elect of Colorado Medical Society, Anne Warhover, CEO Colorado Health Foundation, as well as other patients and doctors throughout Colorado sharing insights on what the Colorado health system is doing right and wrong.
We were founded by award-winning journalists and PBS member station Colorado Public Television to provide in-depth and investigative reporting.
In one major package, we examined the unusually successful healthcare system in Grand Junction, Co., with a mix of multimedia tools: online video, text reporting, photography, charts and links. The package also included a live, call-in broadcast on the Grand Junction system on our sponsoring PBS member station, KBDI-12 in Denver. The program is now available online.
Please, tell us what you think, of healthcare in Grand Junction and our reporting, in the comment sections of each story.
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