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Show Caring Magazine KEEPING PROMISES IHC Celebrates 25 Years of Community-Based Health Care Excellence: Of all the things that have changed at Intermountain Health Care since it was founded 25 years ago, its core mission-excellence mission-excellence in the provision of health care has remained the same. Indeed, much has changed. When IHC was founded on April 1, 1975, it was a multi-hospital system comprising 15 hospitals. In response to changing community needs, IHC added health plans in the 1980s and partnered more closely with physicians in the 1990s. Today, in addition to caring for patients who are sick or injured, IHC helps people prevent illness and improve their health. IHCs founding trustees established community service as the measure of the organization's success. "Excellence" meant the highest quality, state-of-the-art health care, but it also meant meeting community needs for access and affordability. PIONEER ROOTS The citizens who founded IHC recognized they were building on a legacy of health care excellence extending back to the days of the pioneers. Many LBS Church hospitals were created and staffed by medical professionals who had cared for settlers when Utah was still a territory. Beginning with LDS Hospital (founded 1905), the church hospital system grew to include 15 hospitals, including Primary Children's (1911); McKay-Dee (founded 1915 as Dee Memorial); Cottonwood Hospital (1924); and Utah Valley (1939). Marry communities built hospitals by combining local fund-raising efforts with matching church funds. Through the yean, under the able administration of church hospital leaders, lead-ers, the hospitals functioned more and more as a multi-hospital system. In 1974, the church decided the operation of hospitals was no longer central to its mission as a religious organization, and plans were made to donate the hospital system to the Intermountain community. An independent, secular, organization would be created to operate the system on behalf of the community. standards of quality were achieved system-wide, redundant costs were eliminated elimi-nated by sharing services more effectively, effec-tively, and access to care became easier as new services were introduced. Because IHC was both professional and committed to principles of local governance, many 'I L. I' il II ii III! II .ii IHCS FIRST DECADE Utah businessman William N. Jones was asked to serve as chairman of this new organization, and he helped recruit other citizens as founding board members. mem-bers. Then as now, IHC trustees served as unpaid TOlunteers and were drawn from representative parts of the Intermoun tain-area community. The board selected Scott S. Parker as IHCs first president and CEO. In its first years of operation, IHC focused on maximizing the benefits possible pos-sible in a multi-hospital system. Higher communities invited IHC to build a hospital hos-pital or take over the management of an existing hospital. (See sidebar on page 4). AMERICAN HEALTH CARE IN CRISIS During the 1980s, spiraling health care costs caused a revolt by the nation's two largest purchasers of care: government and employers. To control costs, the federal government introduced a schedule sched-ule of fixed payments for services provided pro-vided under Medicare. At the same time, businesses lobbied hard for health care reform and rebelled against the rising cost of health insurance premiums. Hospital systems such as IHC, as well as their physician partners, were asked to provide ever greater amounts of care in exchange for declining reimbursements. How to do more with less? IHC responded to this dilemma in two ways. First, it would seek efficiencies in the processes through which care was delivered, deliv-ered, improving quality and avoiding medical complications wherever possible. Second, it would focus on prevention. By helping people maintain or improve their health, limited health care resources could be applied where they were truly needed. To achieve these two goals higher quality and prevention of illness IHC had to evolve as an organization. In addition to being a multi-hospital system, sys-tem, IHC needed to work more closely with the physicians who prescribed and provided care, and it needed health plans to ensure benefits encouraged both high quality and prevention. So in the mid-1980s, mid-1980s, IHC adopted a core strategy of integration, where doctors, hospitals, and health plans would work together collaboratively in a mutual search for ever higher levels of quality. Following this strategy, THC created its own health plans, which met the need of employers and individuals for high quality, quali-ty, cost-effective health insurance. By 1995, some 250,000 Utahns were direct members of six different IHC plans. Today, the plans are key in helping members mem-bers maintain and improve their health. IHC also invited physicians to work more closely with each other, with nurses nurs-es and other caregivers at the hospitals, and with health plans in helping individuals individ-uals stey healthy. In 1994, KC created a new medical division for physicians who chose to be fully involved in the |