Wash. Health Co-Op Part of Health Reform Debate

This Aug. 24, 2009 photo shows Dr. Rosemary Beck, right, listening to the heart of Winona Smith, left, at a Group Health facility in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

(AP)

Group Health Cooperative was created in Washington state more than six decades ago, started up by members of local granges, unions and cooperatives who were inspired by a physician who had established America's first cooperative hospital in Elk City, Oklahoma.

Now, the Seattle-based co-op that serves nearly 600,000 people in Washington state and Idaho is being mentioned as a potential model in the national health care reform debate.

Group Health officials, while not taking an official stand in the debate, welcome the national discussion centered on their model of care.

"It's patient-focused. What the founders of Group Health wanted was prepaid care that was affordable and patient-centered," said Pam MacEwan, who is responsible for communications and public policy for the cooperative.

The cooperative is a consumer-governed, nonprofit health care system that coordinates care and coverage, which means not only is it the insurance company, but also the health care provider.

Group Health runs its own medical centers, and employs its own doctors, but contracts out hospital care and some specialized care. HealthPartners of Bloomington, Minn., is the other major nonprofit health cooperative in the nation.

So unlike a private physician, who may be covered by private insurers like Aetna or United Health, doctors at Group Health are only seeing patients who are covered under the Group Health plan.

Group Health says that the focus on preventative care, combined with the fact that doctors are salaried — instead of paid based on the number of tests they order or office visits they have — helps make them more cost efficient.

"There's no incentive to encourage doctors to do tests," said Dr. Barbara Detering, a family medicine doctor at Group Health's Capitol Hill campus in Seattle. Instead, the focus is on keeping patients "as healthy as possible so we're avoiding high cost situations."