| NORTHAMPTON — Cooley Dickinson Health Care Corp. plans to join the New England Alliance for Health (NEAH), a health care alliance that will be formed to include hospitals in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont on Jan. 1. This change comes as the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Alliance (DHA) plans a restructuring which includes dissolving the current DHA on Dec. 31.
“Through our membership in DHA, Cooley Dickinson realized savings through the coordination of equipment, supplies, pharmaceuticals, and insurance coverage purchases,” said Craig Melin, president and CEO of Cooley Dickinson. “The alliance also provided for improved productivity and efficiencies in contract management and information systems. We anticipate that we will achieve similar benefits through NEAH.”
Membership in NEAH offers a new legal structure, a less complex governance process, and streamlined operating principles. NEAH preserves the core services that have previously been provided by DHA, including quality improvement, financial planning and benchmarking, group purchasing/materials management, and pharmacy services, education and development for professional staff and trustees, collaborative regional health planning, and access to insurance. NEAH will not have oversight of the election of trustees, facility projects, budgets, or strategic plans of its members, including Cooley Dickinson.
The changes were prompted by a two-year process to address governance issues for DHA as well as its members and to determine the most appropriate operating structure for the future. The review process had shown that, while DHA members wanted to maintain a wide array of services in a collaborative, non-competitive forum, they also wanted to reduce the complexity of the DHA governance structure and retain more local autonomy.
Cooley Dickinson Hospital’s marketing division is working to gradually transition the organization’s logo and other materials so the phrase “member of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Alliance” no longer appears in its collateral and other promotional materials. Other than the changes in the organization’s logo as reflected in its signage, letterhead, and business cards, the transition from DHA to NEAH should be invisible to the local community and will not affect patient care.
Participants in the New England Alliance for Health will continue to work together within a new framework toward the same set of common goals that have been the hallmark of the collaboration within the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Alliance: improving the quality of care provided to patients, enhancing financial performance by creating greater economies of scale, sharing expertise, and working collaboratively to improve the health of the region.
Cooley Dickinson has been a member of the DHA since 1993. |
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