Central Georgia Health Network, Stratus Healthcare Announce Partnership Talks
Staff Report From Middle Georgia CEO
Thursday, May 26th, 2016
Stratus Healthcare, in central and south Georgia, along with Central Georgia Health Network, in Macon, announced their intent to enter into Partnership talks, in order to provide an even higher level of healthcare services to the residents of the communities they serve.
“The excellent physicians of CGHN provide access to primary care and specialty services throughout the central Georgia area. By entering into partnership talks, we expect that Stratus and CGHN will find ways to work together to improve the health of our patients and that these lessons will set the stage for our discussions with physicians throughout the Stratus region,” said Dr. Dean Burke, Chair of the Stratus Governing Board and Chief Medical Officer at Memorial Hospital and Manor in Bainbridge.
Stratus is a non-equity collaboration of health systems, hospitals and physicians formed in July 2013.
Located in South and Central Georgia, the physicians and health systems in Stratus have come together to form a clinically integrated network in order to ensure they provide the highest quality of care to their patients.
Dr. Freddy Gaton, Chair of the CGHN Board, echoed Dr. Burke’s comments about the need to adapt to the numerous changes in healthcare, both in the commercial markets and in government programs.
“Healthcare has gone through significant changes in the last few years and more changes are coming, particularly in the way that physicians are reimbursed for the care they provide. In order to thrive in this new system, physicians must be able to prove, through robust data, that they are providing high quality care to their patients. We believe that our talks with Stratus could lead to a partnership that will better enable us to prove that we provide outstanding care to our patients,” said Dr. Gaton.
CGHN is one of Georgia’s most mature consolidated local healthcare networks comprised of almost 1000 physicians and, along with Navicent health facilities, serve communities throughout more than 15 Counties in Central Georgia.
Providers and patients need options as it relates to the changing health reimbursement landscape. CGHN is physician focused and committed to patient friendly, cost efficient, locally appropriate care solutions, value based contracting and education. CGHN is committed to extending quality healthcare to rural Georgia communities and the Stratus partnership is another step in extending collaboration, communication and better health throughout central and South Georgia” said Chuck Carroll, CEO of CGHN
As a board member of both CGHN and Stratus, Dr. Ninfa Saunders, President and CEO of Navicent Health and co-founder of Stratus Healthcare, sees these partnership talks as being very important for the community. “As we move towards population health management, collaborations among providers, such as the potential partnership between CGHN and Stratus, is going to be critical to improve the health of the patients we serve.”