Westchester Medical Center on Tuesday announced a $500 million, 15-year partnership deal with Royal Philips Electronics NV, the Dutch health care and diversified technology company, to provide managed services for the Valhalla medical center”™s expanded health network in the Hudson Valley.
“We view this as a key strategic piece to our development as a system” serving patients across an eight-county region, WMC President and CEO Michael D. Israel told the Business Journal. Israel said the corporate relationship gives the WMC network first access to new technologies developed by Philips and makes WMC “a beta site” for the Dutch company”™s innovations in health care technology and delivery.
Israel spoke to the Business Journal a few hours before the arrival of Royal Philips CEO Frans van Houten on WMC”™s Grasslands campus to sign the agreement, which Israel said took about six months to complete. WMC first signed a strategic business partnership agreement with Royal Philips in 2007. The new partnership moves the medical center from a typical “transactional relationship” with a vendor to an alliance of “two corporations working together to develop a new health care delivery system,” he said.
Westchester Medical Center Chief Operating Officer Gary F. Brudnicki said WMC will spend an estimated $500 million in capital investments over the agreement”™s 15-year period. It provides the hospital a level payment plan annually and “allows us to have a predictable access to the capital market for substantial investment,” he said.
The Westchester hospital last month rolled out WMCHealth, its newly branded regional health network, when it became majority owner of Bon Secours Charity Health System in Orange and Rockland counties. WMC, which is operated by Westchester County Health Care Corp., a public benefit corporation, also acquired the bankrupt St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie a year ago and operates it as MidHudson Regional Hospital of Westchester Medical Center.
The partners said the Philips health care division, which has its North American headquarters in Andover, Mass., will serve WMCHealth with clinical and business consulting and advanced medical technologies, including imaging systems, patient monitoring, telehealth and clinical informatics solutions.
WMC and Philips officials said they aim to redefine the delivery of quality care in all medical areas, including radiology, cardiology, neurology, oncology and pediatrics, as WMCHealth expands from “a single-campus academic medical center into a multi-location regional health care provider.”
The partners said a joint team of WMCHealth and Philips professionals will work at hospitals and health care sites to optimize medical technology deployment and integrate information technology into a unified platform to enhance WMC operations.
Israel in the announcement said the Philips partnership “not only gives us access to the latest in connected digital health technologies, it will allow us to collaborate on pro-active health management and co-create new patient-centered models of care for the Hudson Valley area.”
At the start, Israel said, WMC and Philips are installing telehealth systems in intensive care units at its Valhalla and Poughkeepsie hospitals. And WMC is working with an IT integration support team from Philips to build an IT infrastructure to manage WMC”™s new health care delivery system for Medicaid patients in the Hudson Valley.
Royal Philips CEO van Houten in the announcement said health systems such as WMC”™s “need a dedicated partner that can bring not just technology, but also deep health care and consumer expertise, resources and solutions that will help accelerate the transformation of their organization and ecosystem ”¦ allowing health systems to expand access to quality care, manage costs and share risk. This allows them to focus on what matters most: delivering better care to the people in their communities.”
In the U.S., Royal Philips has formed similar partnerships with Banner Health, a 23-hospital system based in Phoenix, and Georgia Regents Medical Center in Augusta, Ga. Other clients that have signed on for Philips managed services include the Saudi Arabia health ministry and hospital centers in the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.
“I believe this (WMC partnership)Â is the biggest one they have in the world,” Israel said.
WMC officials said the Philips agreement will not result in hospital layoffs. Israel said the partnership by shaping a successful health care delivery network could result in additional jobs created at WMCHealth as patient numbers increase in the region.
